


Trying to Find The In-Between (Chapters)

by NoStraightLine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 75,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoStraightLine/pseuds/NoStraightLine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DI Lestrade said that Sherlock Holmes was a great man, and one day, if they were very lucky, he'd be a good one. John Watson is many things, but lucky isn't one of them.</p><p>This is the story of how the impossible happens.</p><p>(Now in chapters for easy downloading!)</p><p>The lovely Miamam translated this work into  <a href="http://johnlockpositive.wordpress.com/tag/na-hrane-trying-to-find-the-in-between/">Czech</a>, which is a labor of love if there ever was one. I'm humbled and so very grateful.</p><p><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3730738?view_adult=true/">Podfic</a> by the incredible, patient, hard-working, and talented AxeMeAboutAxiomancy. Srsly, people. I can't even with the love. Thank you, you wonderful, wonderful person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Demonstrative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John survived medical school, Afghanistan, and getting shot. Instigating a relationship with Sherlock Holmes may be the death of him.

“The curator was the only one with access, so the paintings never left the BM! Yes!” Sherlock exclaims with a swirl of midnight tweed, tightening his gloved fist exultantly.

“That’s it?” Lestrade says. Sherlock doesn’t deign to reply to this, just strides through the frosted space separating Donovan and Anderson. You didn’t need to be a proper genius to read the signs of an affair on the rocks, but Sherlock wasted no time at British Museum outlining every tiny detail in the breakup. _Young officer in the traffic unit, two unneutered cats going by the smell, mother with Parkinsons._ The speech set Anderson seething and Donovan gloating, but when Sherlock turned to her and said, “And you took him back,” hitting the consonants with with a disbelieving, mocking tick, Donovan’s eyes went hard and cold. Like she’d like to get Sherlock alone in a dark, stinking alley for five minutes.

Between Donovan and Anderson, Donovan worried John more. Anderson lacks a spine but does possess a wife, which was something to go back to, something else to live on. Donovan has nothing except an unfaithful lover, and John’s sympathies. They are, after all, both having affairs with an emotionally unavailable man whose commitments lie elsewhere.

“Oi! You don’t want to come with us when we pick her up?” Lestrade calls.

“Boring!” Sherlock shouts as he sweeps through the squad room, startling a shivering woman nearly out of her skin. “Come on, John!”

 

 

John knows what came next. He might not be genius material, but he recognizes patterns, even before this relationship to a turn for the improbable. First, there is a case. Then there is the sex after the case.

 

 

The door to 221B barely closes before Sherlock jerks John’s jacket down to his elbows, pinning his arms to his sides.

“Jesus,” John gasps. His head drops back against the door as he ineffectually grapples with his sleeve hems.

Sherlock opens John’s belt and zip, then shoves his pants and jeans down. The movement drops John to his knees. He has enough time to contemplate the beauty of Sherlock’s long, deft fingers working at his own trousers before the detective sinks his cock deep into John’s mouth. There are no preliminaries; it’s fast and rough. John’s cock hardens so quickly the drop in blood pressure in his brain makes him dizzy. His shaft pulses and lifts into the dark, quiet air in the flat. Sherlock slides his fingers through John’s hair almost gently, his thumbs stroking John’s cheekbones with what from anyone else would be tenderness.

There’s nothing gentle about the way he’s driving into John’s mouth. Frenzied, John wrestles with his jacket, trying to get it off so he can get a hand on his cock, but Sherlock simply braces his forearms on the door and leans into his next stroke. John stills to focus on breathing. His reward is Sherlock fucking his mouth with a brazen insolence that forces a moan from deep in John’s chest.

Sherlock pops free, leaving John open-mouthed and gasping. “Down.”

Grit on the floor smears against John’s cheek when he obeys, but not until he’s resisted just enough to make Sherlock make him do it. One of the inner pockets of the voluminous coat contains a tube of lubricant. Sherlock must have been quite confident the trip to the docks would solve the case.

He’s equally confident John won’t refuse him.

One lube-slick finger slides into John’s arse, stroking fire over nerves jangling for sensation. After a few shallow strokes a second joins the first. John hisses his breath out through his teeth. He can’t get his hands on the floor, let alone his cock. With his jeans trapping his legs together, submission heightens sensation almost unbearably.

“Fuck. Oh fuck,” he groans when Sherlock’s searching fingers find his prostate.

Sherlock slicks his cock, then presses in until John groans and tenses at the stretch, then pulls back until his glans stretches John’s anus and waits until John eases back into tremors. His next stroke goes deep. John is forced forward by the power in the stroke. Growling with impatience Sherlock grips his hip hard enough to bruise, and pounds into him again.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John demands. “Fuck, I need….”

Sherlock rings his thumb and forefinger around John’s cock, finessing foreskin over glans until John cries out. With a musician’s feel for tempo, Sherlock times his rhythmic strokes of John's cock to coincide with a thrust aimed for John’s prostate, working every pleasure receptor in John’s body. Again, again, again, stealing breath until John’s reduced to inhaling when Sherlock pulls almost all the way out, air forced from him with each thrust. It’s raw, animalistic, and when John comes he blacks out for a moment. The thunder of blood in his ears transforms into Sherlock’s guttural groan as he buries himself balls deep in John. The intimate pulses of his orgasm send sensation skittering along John’s nerves again.

Aftershocks roll through him, the creak and crackle of strained tendons and contorted hips and spine audible in the silence. They are literally just inside the door. Not even on the carpet. If the whole thing took ten minutes, John will eat the tongues decomposing in the fridge. Uncooked.

Still buried deep inside him, Sherlock tugs John’s coat off, releasing his arms, then pulls out. “Shower,” he commands.

John gets to his feet and follows Sherlock into the darkness.

 

 

He wears Sherlock’s finger-bruises for a day or so before they fade. The contact with the floor abraded his cheek. He tells the concerned clinic staff his leg gave way on pavement. It was an accident.

Maybe it was. It’s hard to tell with Sherlock.

 

 

Case. Sex. Afterwards there is food, then two days of sleeping. The pattern completes with the crash. The violin, the pacing, the long sulks, days of experiments rendering food inedible, the fridge unhygenic, and occasionally the flat unlivable.

Like Sherlock, John also crashes.

Unlike Sherlock, he has to eat so he pushes a buggy through the Tesco, duels with the checkout machine. He returns to his own work at the clinic, updates his blog, keeps his appointments with his therapist, chats with Mrs. Hudson. He has coffee with people he likes, negotiates around people he doesn’t like. No archenemies. Just the Moriarty name rising like steam from the Thames.

He has PTSD. Sherlock is a sociopath who risks his life to prove he’s clever. The flat positively reeks of mental instability. Neither one of them lives well in the between times.

He comes home after an eight-hour shift in clinic once again unable to cope with the automated teller. Sherlock lies on the sofa, fingers tented under his lips, utterly unaware of John’s presence. The thought rises through the black, oily smoke in John’s mind that he misses affection. He pinballs between the mundane and the singular, with none of the daily contact that strings the two together. Conversation while he cooks. A text along the lines of _thinking of you_ rather than _Pick up small intestine at Bart’s_. A kiss goodbye or hello.

 

He’ll have to initiate it. John has survived firefights. He can do this.

 

When his flatmate’s mood swings to the eerie calm accompanying a successful chemistry experiment, John takes the risk. As Sherlock equates small talk with stupidity, there’s no point in prefacing action with explanation. So on his way past Sherlock to the electric kettle he bends (not very far) to kiss Sherlock on the cheek.

Sherlock leans away. “What are you doing?”

Heat thuds in John’s cheeks, the dull, stinging red of embarrassment. “Giving you a kiss.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s nice. Because it’s what people do when they’re — ” He gestures between himself and Sherlock.

Sherlock stares. John watches his expression sliding through surprise to something John won’t like. So he heads him off.

“Look, the cases are like being hit by a lorry. The sex is like being hit by the meteor that ended the dinosaurs. There’s nothing in between. Sometimes I just want a kiss.”

It’s not enough to stop the disdain from taking over Sherlock’s odd, compelling features. “The man who invaded Afghanistan wants a kiss.”

The smirking tone grates almost as much as the screaming kettle. John’s not sure if Sherlock’s mocking John’s masculinity, the futility of invading Afghanistan, or the entirety of sentiment, but he’s confident he’s being mocked. He switches off the kettle.

“Delete it,” he says as he pours boiling water over chai. In hindsight, the plan was doomed to fail. Affection is, by definition, the kind of pointless thing Sherlock ignores, unless it’s useful to him. Much like John.

Sherlock says nothing, confirmation that the entire conversation never happened.

 

Once was hard enough. Twice feels like begging, and John isn’t about to beg. He is home, wounded, not right in the head, living with a sociopath he’d killed for.

During their charming little chat Mycroft said John missed the war, but that came from a man who’d never marched a mile let alone treated wounded boys screaming for their mothers, a man who plays childish games with CCTV cameras. Any battered spouse could tell you it was possible to miss something that hurt you, but John refuses to recreate the Afghanistan with greater London as the field of battle. No. He’s seen too many men destroy themselves when facing not bombs or bullets but birthday parties and Saturday nights in front of the telly. He needs a flat-share. Sherlock’s incredible brain fascinates him. Without the sex, this is a workable living arrangement, close to his clinic and the tube.

The pattern needs shifting, but the only behaviour he can change is his own. He wouldn’t treat a woman this way.

The thought gives him pause. Would he let a woman treat _him_ like this? Use him and then discard him until she needed him again?

It would depend on how he felt. He’s not above a mutually agreeable itch-scratching. But if he cared for her, if the feelings weren’t returned, out of simple self-preservation, he’d break it off. How does he feel about Sherlock?

He cares for Sherlock. Admires him, respects him. He’s not sure if he likes him, but he recognizes devotion. After his military service, it’s a familiar emotion, along with another lesson absorbed into skin and bone while invading Afghanistan.

He recognizes futility in all forms — and characters — now.

There’s only one solution.

He’ll just stop having sex with Sherlock.

 

 

The next case, a simple little murder, takes up fewer hours of their Saturday than the paperwork afterwards.

The door to 221B closes. “We’ll require food later, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock calls down the corridor in that baritone, deepened by victory and desire.

John’s learned his lesson, taking the stairs two at a time to beat Sherlock into the flat. John stands by the fire, removing his gloves in short, precise jerks, while Sherlock closes the door. He won’t look at Sherlock. He won’t. Except the man stands between John and his bed, the one he intends to sleep in. Alone.

Dusk has fallen. One distinct shade of London’s many greys washes the room of color. Sherlock sheds his coat and scarf in front of the sitting room window, then turns to face John. His skin has the hue and translucence of skim milk. Pewter light gilds his hair, and casts his pale eyes in shadow. He says nothing, but desire softens that improbable mouth — the full lower lip, the bracketed upper one — as two fingers glide along the edge of the table between the windows.

John’s body remembers the sensation of those fingers trailing down the tendons in his neck, taking his pulse (elevated, whispered in a hushed baritone), then continuing along his sternum to circle his cock, then dip below his balls to rub the sensitive patch between balls and arsehole. It’s a tease, a good one, coaxing his body to open long before the slightest pressure. Blood courses down, an inexorable reversal of pulse and circulation before his brain remembers his resolve.

He will not do this again.

He cannot. A crash looms. The choice lies in whether it comes after the sex or before. After promised an orgasm (two, more likely) and the indubitable pleasure of rough sex. Before meant he wouldn’t have to pick himself up from the floor (literally and metaphorically) when Sherlock’s attention flicked off again.

He clears his throat, uses his Captain Watson voice. “I’m going to have a shower, then go to bed.”

The fingers halt. When he’s not sprinting across London’s rooftops and intersections, motion in Sherlock is measured in cellular vibrations. For a brief instant, molecules cease to oscillate.

Grey eyes narrow ever so slightly. A nod. Nothing else.

John turns for the bath.

He shampoos and soaps. He ignores his cock, thickening between his legs as soapy water courses over his pelvis, down his thighs. Slippery skin reminds him of slippery slopes, how a series of small compromises will consume what honor he has left. Sex with Sherlock cannot, under any circumstances, be added to a list of Small Compromises. Drinking skim milk in his Earl Grey because Sherlock’s left the cream to curdle on the counter is a Small Compromise. Severed heads in the fridge is a Fairly Large Compromise. Sex with Sherlock is a Compromise on the scale of the Treaty of Versailles, requiring similar Carthaginian concessions, both economic and territorial, leaving him equally ruined.

He pulls on a t-shirt and pajama pants to sleep in. It’s cold in his bedroom, damp air held in chilly sheets, circumstances made even colder when he thinks about how, in normal circumstances, he’d be sweating in Sherlock’s bed.

The chill in the bed makes his shoulder throb, but he’s in bed, with his dignity, and an erection refusing to take a hint from the raw air.

 

The violin begins shortly after the bed warms up enough for him to relax. Perhaps Sherlock simply skipped the sex step and went right to his own crash. John harbors a moment of regret. They are bound together, him and Sherlock, but he can’t back down. He also can’t identify the tune, but the minor chords set his teeth on edge. He’s survived residency, slept through mortar attacks. He can make himself fall asleep, or he could, before PTSD taught him to fear his subconscious. Moments of awareness play hide-and-seek with slumber as the silver light from the moon picks out the minute cracks in the plaster beside his bed.

 

First: lips on his temple.

 

Next: the brush of a full mouth on his ear. _The angle of moonlight has flattened_ , he thinks blurrily. _I'm asleep._

 

“Don’t wake up.”

The baritone rumble is half-command, half-hypnotism, all liquid sex. It works. John’s aware, but not awake. Or awake, but not aware of anything other than the mouth against his ear. All the tiny hairs tremble with each soft exhalation. Gooseflesh races down his spine. Lying on his back, he holds himself still, one hand loose at his side, the other resting on his abdomen. The moment stretches while he resumes breathing, then that mouth, that sinful mouth, moves to the lobe.

Tongue.

Teeth. Delicious, demanding pressure, bordering on pain, then releasing as the lips move to his jaw, then over the stubble he didn’t bother to shave. A body shifts over his, all planes and angles, and yet his hyper-vigilant brain doesn’t register a threat. Lips align with his as hands plant on either side of his head, knees beside his hips. He senses heat but not touch, no touch anywhere but his mouth.

Bastard.

Some aware part of him knows he should push Sherlock away. He said he didn’t want this. Except…he didn’t. He said he was having a shower then going to bed. Then he used up all his willpower not having a wank in the shower. Or bed.

Anyway, he’s not awake. Is he?

The pressure on his mouth isn’t a kiss. Yet. It’s breath and heat that sparks into tingling awareness long before intent registers. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to see dark curls tumbling over a pale, high forehead above him. His sense of hearing is heightened by lust and lack of vision, so he can tell that Sherlock’s no longer wearing trousers and a dress shirt. The faint whisper of silk against cotton means he’s changed into the blue silk robe, t-shirt, and pajama bottoms the detective sleeps in, when he sleeps. The robe drifts around them like a ghost of the coat Sherlock wears with the collar turned up. It makes him look cool. John knows Sherlock knows that. The man isn’t unaware of looks, his own or the longing or curious or assessing ones he receives when he walks down a street. He just deletes them, unless he can somehow use the person’s desire to get something he needs.

Like now.

The brush of lips becomes a kiss when Sherlock slants his mouth across John’s, that full lower lip so plush against his own mouth. A hint of tongue traces his upper lip, then a quick dip inside. John doesn’t move. His skin heats under the tantalizingly light pressure, and with each heartbeat that heated blood ebbs through his arteries, awakening nerves, muscles, his cock. The second dip inside flickers against the roof of John’s mouth before Sherlock withdraws again. A pause, then teeth on John’s lower lip, then tongue, then a slide between lower lip and teeth. John’s awareness contracts to his mouth.

A teasing touch to the tongue again, and he shudders. Of course Sherlock’s brilliant at this, too.

It’s the kiss John wanted, magnified and stretched and heated, taken apart for study, like everything else in this flat, and it’s a fucking tease. His cock’s rigid in his pajama pants. Sherlock’s not touching him except with mouth and breath. He involuntarily exhales a little string of sounds against Sherlock’s lips. In response, he gives John flickering licks and teasing nips and slow swipes of that miracle of a mouth against John’s. It’s part kiss, part snog, all fucking tease. Somehow Sherlock’s rewired John’s cock so all the sensation focused on his mouth builds the pressure between his legs. He shifts, hips lifting in search of the pressure his cock demands.

“Don’t wake up, John.”

Forcing his hips to relax makes his fingers tingle with restraint. The pressure-kiss deepens, the sweep of tongue into his mouth becomes more explicitly hotter until a groan forces its way out of John’s throat. The hand on his abdomen fists in his t-shirt, involuntarily brushing his knuckles against Sherlock’s stomach. At the same time the hand by his side clenches around the sheets, tangling the blue silk robe with the cotton of his sheets and quilt. His cock is so hard. The slightest shift of his hips brushes his erection against Sherlock’s. He registers rigid heat, the softness of the sac underneath. Jesus. Fuck. He’s a slag. A cheap one. One kiss and he’s gagging for it.

_But it’s a very good kiss._

Sherlock mouths down John’s chin to his neck. Soft curls snag in his stubble before Sherlock shifts lower, using one hand to push John’s t-shirt up before tugging at the drawstring of his pajama bottoms. John wavers between lifting his hips to help and continuing the facade of sleeping. He forces his body to remain slack and heavy. His reward is Sherlock’s hand at either hip, then the curve of his arse, working the pants down, then all the way off.

Suddenly, the cool damp air is a living thing against his cock. He savors the brief respite as the bed dips and shifts with Sherlock’s movements. The robe is swept back, silk slithering in the silence.

Then wet heat engulfs his glans, and he cannot stop the noise that chokes from his throat. Movement stops.

“I’m not awake. I’m not…fuck. _Fuck. Sherlock_.”

No response but a hint of suction, then that clever, knowing tongue working below the head, swirling lazily down the shaft. It’s a kiss. Of sorts. Tendrils of pleasure unfurl and coil to his mouth, his nipples, his anus. A few minutes of electric sweet torture, then the mouth drifts lower, over his balls, to tongue the sensitive patch behind them.

John spreads his thighs. Fuck tomorrow. Fuck the crash.

The click of a lid, then the gurgle of lube, then one finger presses into his arse to take up a slow rhythm. First knuckle only, in and out, another tease. John’s feeling everything tonight. Everything. Hot breath on his cock, so close, but he knows better than to push up.

It’s torture.

Two fingers now, still not pressing deep. Pleasure seeps out in ripples that ebb against his skin. He feels the tight ring of muscle slowly opening, and experiences something new, the longing to open. It’s a slow burn that flares hotter when Sherlock pushes deep and sucks John’s glans into his mouth at the same time. A lazy twist of his wrist, a brush of fingertips over John’s prostate, a firm suck, and John can’t help the way his hips buck.

“Oh, Christ. Jesus fuck, _Jesus fuck_.” His hand lands on Sherlock’s head and for a moment everything stops.

“Are you awake?”

“No,” he gasps. He’s lying. Sherlock knows it, but Sherlock’s also not giving him what he asked for. Fuck, he wants to feel Sherlock’s head bob. He doesn’t lift his hand.

It begins again. His hips jitter between thrusting up into Sherlock’s mouth or grinding down on his wickedly twisting fingers, and in the end do neither. He’s not going to come like this and he knows it. Sherlock’s preparing John, getting him ready for Sherlock’s cock. So John rides the waves of pleasure pulsing from his arse through his cock, up through his torso, where they force a deep, trembling groan from his throat.

As if it’s a prearranged signal, Sherlock releases John’s cock and slides his fingers from his arse. The brief rustle of clothing means Sherlock’s shoved his pajama bottoms down, nothing more. John spreads his legs wide, beyond caring how he’ll feel in the morning. All he wants the fuck that’s looming, because if it’s even a tenth of the intensity this is promising, it will obliterate him.

The slippery kiss of a cock getting slicked, then Sherlock arranges himself between John’s legs. Silk settles over them both, and John groans again. The robe, the coat, he’ll take either or both right now. Moving very deliberately, Sherlock grips his hips and drags John up on his thighs. He aligns his cock at John’s stretched, dilating hole and pushes inside. John risks opening his eyes slightly, and sees marauding moonlight in his bed, white t-shirt, blue robe, head tipped back so the column of his throat gleams.

It’s too much, and anyway, he’s not awake.

The first thrust tests him. The second finds his prostate. Sherlock tips forward, rocking John’s hips up, opening him wider, deeper. Braced on his forearms, both hands intertwine with John’s, pinning his hands beside his head while his mouth hovers over John’s. Breath and heat and slick…connection arcs between their mouths like electricity seeking to complete a circuit. He’s all but whimpering before Sherlock plunders John’s mouth. Then it’s amazing, _fucking brilliant, God oh fuck ohfuckohfuck_. It’s the heated scratch of Sherlock’s incipient stubble, nothing tentative or gentle about the pressure. Skin splits inside his mouth. The coppery taste makes his cock throb, exacerbating the fact that there’s nothing on his cock except the tantalizing brush of Sherlock’s abdomen with each stroke.

He’s breathing a string of obscenities and pleas into Sherlock’s mouth, desperate for a hand to his cock, when a sharp twinge shoots through his damaged shoulder. At his pained grunt Sherlock immediately lifts his right hand from John’s left. Driven by primitive need John reaches for his cock, but Sherlock blocks him. “No.”

Eyes still closed, John says, “Fuck, fuck, why not?”

“We’re kissing,” he says.

The words drift into John’s mouth at the same pace as Sherlock’s cock glides into his arse, relentless, implacable, purposeful. The next few strokes drive John’s hand from hovering at Sherlock’s waist to his shoulder to gripping Sherlock’s nape. His hand clenches around hair and skin, muscle and bone, holding his mouth to John’s. In Sherlock’s mind kissing must equate with fucking, because that’s what’s happening. John’s being fucked. Slowly. Deliberately. Every movement coalesces, building, battering at him.

Sherlock slides his forearm under John’s left thigh and lifts it up and back, opening John more intensely. The next stroke has some punch to it, thudding Sherlock’s pelvis and balls against John’s ass. The kiss is nearly as brutal. There’s teeth to go with the tongue, a favor John returns with interest, and again coppery taste of blood mixes with his saliva. He’s never done this before, coming without slick, hot pressure on his cock, but tonight _holyfuckingGod_ Sherlock might manage that particular feat. Manage him.

The kissing is _spectacular_ , supernovas and the lame walking again. He’s coming apart at the seams.

His exhalations disintegrate into a long stuttering groan, and the inhalations sound desperate, pleading. He’s shamelessly spread, the fingers of his right hand pressed into the pillow by his head and gripping Sherlock’s left hard enough to grind tendon against bone. The fingers of his left clench and releases in the hair at Sherlock’s nape. Sherlock’s braced on his left forearm while the other supports John’s left thigh. It’s a hard fuck, and it takes an eternity, stretching John between mouth and arse. Each slap of hips to his arse reminds him of who owns him, whether he likes it or not.

He likes it very, very much, and hates himself for it. Right now his body is positively gorging on sensation, beating his brain into submission. Regrets will come later.

He lifts his hips, writhing for contact, but Sherlock ruthlessly pins him to the bed and spreads him wider at the same time. Release inches up his shaft, his balls tightening with each slow, hard thrust. He’s curling up off the bed, shoulder straining against Sherlock’s hold, and the sounds he’s making. God, the sounds. In some dim backbrain place recording what’s happening to him, he knows he sounds like a man getting the fuck of a lifetime. Sherlock swallows them, returns them back to John in a threatening rumble, the purr of a giant predatory cat.

The dark, tasty mixture simmers in his veins as he tightens, _tightens_ , heart racing, cock throbbing as orgasm pulses from him in sharp bursts. With the first pulse he reflexively jerks his legs in and up, and Sherlock’s next thrust, no less of a hip-punch for John’s orgasm, goes deep. Come spurts to his collarbone, then his abdomen, but his sharpest cry comes when Sherlock’s semen pulses into his arse.

Gasping for air, John tightens his fingers in Sherlock’s hair and pulls. Sherlock sat back, disengaging their bodies. He leaves, then returns with a damp cloth for John. John cleans himself up while Sherlock tightens the tapes of his pajama bottoms.

John tosses the used flannel in the general direction of the bathroom to cover the fact that he’s breathing in the same deep hard gasps he uses to lurch out of the nightmares. Tears sting the corners of his eyes.

He doesn’t want Sherlock to see any of this. “Go.”

Perverse to the end, Sherlock climbs into bed with him, wraps his arm around John’s shoulders and pulls him down. Slowly, slowly, the shudders end. He’s not ready to talk about it, but he has to say something. Sherlock speaks first.

“Go back to sleep.”

“I never woke up,” John says.

 

 

He sleeps. If he dreams, he doesn’t remember.

 

 

In the morning he is alone in his bed.

 

 

Despite the hasty cleanup he’s rank with sweat and dried semen, so he cleans his teeth while the water warms. He can’t look in the mirror, but the sidelong glimpses he catches tell him his mouth is still swollen from Sherlock’s. The toothpaste stings the raw spots on his inner lip where his teeth, or Sherlock’s, cut into flesh. He showers and shaves and dresses in jeans and his warmest jumper.

Sherlock’s sitting in the kitchen, also showered and shaved, wearing clean pajama pants, t-shirt, and the robe. A microscope, slides, files sit on the table before him. John makes tea, using his peripheral vision to gather data about Sherlock.

Those gorgeous, improbable lips are equally swollen. A bruise darkens the skin just above the collar of his t-shirt, likely from the moment of spectacular climax. John vaguely remembers sinking his teeth into the slope where pale neck meets shoulder as he shouted out his orgasm.

He sets a cup down in front of Sherlock.

Small talk is still pointless. “I didn’t want that.”

“And I don’t like being manipulated.”

“God forbid someone else pull the strings,” John says wearily. “It was an act of self-defence, not manipulation.”

Sherlock’s pewter gaze flicks his direction. He understands self-defence, John realises. He understands the desire to protect yourself from something, or someone.

Eyes narrowing, Sherlock parses this new bit of information. “You said yes when I told you it would be dangerous. Affection is incompatible with your obvious need for high risk situations.”

“Not all the time, Sherlock,” he says. “It’s not dangerous all the time. It’s not fight or fuck all the time.”

The silence weighs more than a fully loaded field pack. Pale gold tinges the air this morning, a rare sunny day in London’s rainy spring. The tint of color makes Sherlock less ethereal and more human. Younger. Uncertain in a way John’s never seen him before.

“You have trust issues.”

“Yes. So my therapist says, yes.”

“And yet you trust me to care for your emotions?”

Something in the flicker of Sherlock’s eyelashes arrests John’s attention. A rare question from Sherlock. Why ask when you can deduce?

The detective continues. “A very bad risk, I’m afraid. I have it on very good authority that I am incapable of caring for others.”

With that pronouncement-slash-sweeping judgement that is absolute bollocks based on the events of last night, clarity resolves in John’s brain. Perhaps Sherlock’s aloof reserve and icy superiority are nothing more than highly developed defences developed in the wake of painful failures. But in that question John’s figured out why he asked for the kiss at all.

That’s the risk he wants to take. It’s a high-wire act worthy of a man who misses war as much as he wants to find a way to exist in the world. “I’ll take that risk.”

“The decision,” Sherlock says precisely, “isn’t yours to make alone.”

The light slowly dawns. “You don’t like feeling anything. For anyone.”

“The work,” Sherlock says, emphasizing the final k with great precision, “comes first.” He hits the t with the ticking enunciation he uses to remind people they are idiots, but John sees underneath the disdain to the fear. Sherlock knows he’s different. He knows other people care about feelings, breakfast, sentiment, each other, and he knows he doesn’t. Or does he? Is he just exceptionally good at managing feelings?

“And yet here we are,” John says. “You feel something for me.”

Grey eyes slant his direction, an indirect gaze, intent without seeming so, the only concession he’s going to get.

“That scares you. So you cram it into the cases. Into sex.”

Sherlock returns his gaze to the microscope sitting on the kitchen table. Despite the chaos on the table, John can’t see any visible evidence of an experiment, no severed ears or fingers or organs, and that scares him more than the decomposing rats he found in the fridge last week. What terrifying microbe or virus is Sherlock studying?

There’s no slide clipped to the stage. Sherlock’s not studying anything except the workings of his own heart.

“I want to do those things. I don’t want to want to do those things.”

“Welcome to my world,” John says.

Silence, but he’s not going to make this easier. Fuck a mile. Give Sherlock an inch and he’ll burn down the whole sodding ecosystem.

“Will you leave if I don’t? Don’t say you won’t,” he continues before John can answer. “It was implied in your behaviour last night.”

John doesn’t deny it. “You don’t want me to leave.”

“No.”

“But you don’t want to want to kiss me.”

“Again, no.”

“But you do, in fact, want to kiss me.”

“Yes.”

“Because you feel something for me.” John huffs air through his nostrils. Not a laugh, not a snort, frustrating Sherlock-middle-ground as they circle round something neither of them can explain. “Confusing, yeah?”

The pale gaze slides his way, a flicker of moonlight in the day’s gleam.

“Very.”

John waits. Sherlock has to negotiate this. The process matters more than the results.

“No one stays for affection. They stay for amazing.”

“Plenty of people stay for affection.”

“Not you.”

John cuts him a glance. It’s true. John wouldn’t stay for affection. If affection were enough, he’d ask out Sarah from the clinic. She’s safe, sane, sensible. Kind. Affection thrums under every word she speaks. “I’m not a simple man, Sherlock. The war’s over, but I can’t replace one drug with another drug. I need both.”

“I will fail. You will leave. Take the sex, John. It’s brilliant sex.”

This time John’s sigh is vividly eloquent. “It is, you utter twat. You’re the genius. You can do this, if you can be arsed to figure it out. Don’t make me choose between affection and amazing. Please.”

John watches Sherlock’s face with the same intensity he once reserved for triage. Immediate surgery or wait? Lives depend on the right decision. His life depends on this one.

Sherlock’s nod is infinitesimal, but it’s there. John gives a decisive nod in return. He gets up to make toast, opens the fridge for the marmalade, and finds…only marmalade.

“No heads? No tongues?”

“Disappointed?”

He shrugs, and drops bread in the toaster. “I’m sure you’ll make it up to me.”

 

 

Despite his flair for the dramatic, Sherlock doesn’t change dramatically. Or immediately. One day he drops a kiss to the top of John’s head as they muddle in the kitchen. John smiles but otherwise doesn’t make a big deal about it.

Presented with positive results to what was clearly a hypothesis to be tested, Sherlock continues. The next damp Sunday John sits on the floor in front of Sherlock’s chair and reads by the fire, the book on balanced on his knees. For long minutes Sherlock lies impossibly contorted in his chair, fingers tented under his nose. Then his fingers rest on John’s head. John smiles, but continues to read. The fingers begin to idle through John’s hair. It’s shockingly intimate, Sherlock’s long, elegant fingers trailing through his hair, awakening nerve endings in his scalp. John quickly loses the ability to turn letters into words, or words into sentences. His hand drops to John’s shoulder, from where his thumb strokes the skin above John’s collar, then comes to rest in the notch of collarbone, shirt collar, and jumper.

The touch is as permanent as if Sherlock inked his thumbprint and left it on John’s skin. At random moments throughout John’s day — pondering lab results, waiting for the tube, watching tea steep — he found himself dabbing the tip of his middle finger to the hollow of his throat.

There are negative results. He and John both learn approaching him silently from behind results in hot tea splashing over John’s hand, his trousers, and the kitchen floor. Days go by before John sees Sherlock consciously remember the experiment.

Affection isn’t automatic. It’s work, but when Sherlock slides into John’s bed in the middle of the night, for John the sex is layered with nuances of touch and memory. John doesn’t mention this to Sherlock. He’s not going to push his luck.

One morning John’s due at clinic when Lestrade calls with a double suicide that looks like maybe it wasn’t, in a locked room to boot. Sherlock flings himself into his coat and out of the flat. No sooner has the echo of his shoes on the stairs faded and the front door slammed than the door bounces off the entryway wall. Sherlock takes the stairs two at a time. John turns in search of what the detective’s forgotten, his scarf, his magnifying lens. Instead the flat door bangs open, then Sherlock leans in just far enough to drop a kiss on John’s mouth.

“That is what people do, is it not? Kiss each other goodbye?” he husks against John’s mouth.

“Yes.”

A second kiss, a third, this time with tongue and hands in his hair, and John backed into the wall, the coat sheltering them. Then Sherlock rears back with a delighted smile. “Oh. Oh, yes. John, you are amazing,” he murmurs. “You are…fantastic.”

“Yes, I am,” John says breathlessly. He is. He’s sure of it. He can keep soldiers alive, make sick people well, and besides. The madman made of moonlight just told him so. “Why am I amazing?”

“Desire is like hunger, or sleeplessness. Sharpens the mind.” He looks around the room, then back at John. “Oh, this is very good.”

John gives him his very best shit-eating grin.

Sherlock kisses it right off his mouth when he tips John’s chin up for a single, open-mouthed kiss. The flicker of tongue against tongue sends blood pulsing to John’s cock, and his hand involuntarily grips Sherlock’s hip. “It will be even better later.”

John watches him go, then puts on his coat. Sherlock is still Sherlock. It’s still about the cases. And the sex.

But now there’s kissing.

It’s a start.


	2. First Word...Three Syllables...Sounds Like...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wants to top Sherlock. It will be boring, of course.
> 
> But then it isn’t.

“Wrong, John. Wrong in every possible variation.”

John Watson is a small man, which means Sherlock looms over him even when he sweeps back his coat’s heavy skirt and crouches down next to John, already on his knees by the body. They’re in an unpleasant little flat in a dingy row of buildings in Peckham. Sherlock’s intimately familiar with the neighborhood, the buildings. When he was twenty he lived here for seven months after Mycroft convinced Mummy to cut him off until he “came to his senses”. Even before he took up residence in a flat down the hall he obtained drugs in this very building. Sometimes he even used money to buy them.

So the dead junkie sprawled on the floor in front of him is familiar. She’s on her back, her skirt around her hips, her blouse and bra torn open, but that’s dull. Sherlock snaps on gloves and begins to examine her. Lestrade called him in, but he’s not primary. DI Dimmock is, and despite a tendency to draw the precise opposite of the right conclusion, DI Dimmock doesn’t want Sherlock on his case.

“She was kidnapped, she was raped, and she was murdered,” Dimmock proclaims. He’s got his notepad in his hand, and he’s looking around the dingy flat as if the murderer were hiding in the cupboard.

“That is exactly you’d think, if you were an idiot,” Sherlock responds.

Dimmock bristles.

“Sherlock,” John begins.

“She’s got money. Not her own, she’s too young for that, but her family’s connected. Good color in her hair, a good cut, manicure, regular spa treatments. Raised in Berkshire, and a St. Andrews girl, if I’m not mistaken, which I’m not, Cambridge, but sent down.”

“We know that,” Dimmock says, throwing a glance at Anderson. Sherlock can feel him roll his eyes. “This is Lady Jane Ainsworth. She’s been missing for four days. We kept it out of the papers for the family’s privacy.”

“She wasn’t kidnapped, or raped, or murdered,” Sherlock continues as he removes Lady Jane’s rather garish shoe. “It’s a simple exchange. Sex for drugs, then she OD’d.”

“Sherlock,” John repeats in the tone he uses when he wants Sherlock to settle down, “This was brutal.” His rumpled face bears a tightly restrained sorrow as he indicates the bruising on her thighs and neck, the bite marks on her breasts, then lifted one slack wrist to expose her unmarked arm. Presented with a violated, pretty girl, he wants to see a kidnapping, an assault, a violent crime. So does Dimmock, not out of John’s solicitude but because the reality will set off a great cracking nightmare for the Yard. “There’s no evidence of drug use.”

“For God’s sake, look at her!” Sherlock snaps. “Good cut, yes, but grown out too much. Quality color, but look at the roots. Touched up herself. The manicure? Also touched up. A girl in her circle wouldn’t touch up either, she’d get it redone. That bag is last year’s Dior, but her set changes bags at least every season. She could claim sentiment, but she wouldn’t. Too fashion-conscious. Her shoes,” he says, holding up her left Louboutin, “blue and teal and orange, unfortunate combination, are new, because shoes matter. She’s rationing money — they’re monitoring her funds — she might have the wits to steal without getting caught but she’s done it before so they’re onto her — trying to salvage appearances and convince her family she’s clean but still get her fix, so she used another form of currency to buy the drugs.”

With that he spreads her toes apart. A cluster of injection sites appears in the white skin between each of her toes. He repeats the process on her other foot. John ducks his head and mutters something under his breath.

“She’s hiding her habit, trying to get back in her family’s good graces. Her dealer doesn’t live here — they never do because then he can claim they weren’t his drugs — he uses this flat for transactions with more desperate clients. They had rather ruthless sex — or he did — he gave her the drugs she’d just…purchased…but something was wrong with the formulation. Really, John, I expected more from an Army doctor.”

The flat goes silent except for the heavy tread of the woman who lives the next floor up and the grating whine of her two small brats as they follow her up the stairs.

John’s very still as he looks at him, his blue eyes dark. A muscle jumps in his jaw, then he looks away.

 

 

 

*

John Watson is ordinary, which means he lacks Sherlock’s sweeping range of vision, his vast storehouse of a brain, his preternatural ability to make sense of a hundred disparate pieces of information with a glance. An A&E doctor might think to search for hidden injection sites. Perhaps John would have, eventually, after he came to terms with the obvious signs of sexual trauma. John’s compassionate as well as ordinary. Sherlock left out the diatribe young Lady Jane likely heard as she paid for her drugs _slut filthy slut little whore you like that don’t you suck it shut it and spread your fucking legs._ Explaining this rather exquisite courtesy to John likely won’t make up for belittling him in front of the Yard.

_Belittle (v): to make unimportant, or small._

At first glance, it wouldn’t seem possible to make John Watson smaller. He’s shorter than Sherlock, Anderson, Sally Donovan, all of the forensics techs except the one shaped like a hard boiled egg, and barely as tall as DI Dimmock. Interrupting him to denigrate his medical and investigative skills might do the trick, though.

Sherlock knows ordinary people stop talking to allow another to interject, disagree, respond, to establish a presence in a group. They stop when their audience indicates boredom or dissatisfaction or hurt feelings. They validate each other. He’s observed this. He just sees no reason to mimic the behavior especially when there’s a case, even a dull one, and Dimmock to annoy and Anderson to infuriate, or Mycroft to enrage. Why should he? After all, is he not the most brilliant, most unique individual walking the streets of London?

John thinks so. John uses words like _amazing_ and _brilliant_ and _fantastic_. Not _freak_. Not the other words people use. He invited John to the pink lady’s crime scene only because Anderson refuses to work with Sherlock. But he never expected John to follow him to the school. In the back of the ambulance when Sherlock connected his deductions to the short man standing at parade rest just outside the police tape and realized John shot the cabbie, the next thought to present itself was most astonishing.

Here is a man willing to kill to keep Sherlock from killing himself when most people who knew him crossed the street to avoid him, and others go out of their way to wound him, or try to control him.

How unexpected.

How diverting.

How very, very _useful_.

 

 

 

*

People do seek out Sherlock. Clients, with their petty problems and their pedestrian brains. There’s Lestrade, who likes Sherlock, oddly enough, and absolutely needs him, but effectively manages both of those emotions with the occasional use of a drugs bust to keep Sherlock in line. Sherlock respects the tactic, because he’d do the same. After all, he stepped on a dying man’s bullet-mangled shoulder to get information, and felt nothing but impatience until he wailed out a name.

But John is different. He follows Sherlock, feeds him, writes up his cases in exceptionally flattering terms. He watches, seems unable to stop doing so. Sherlock’s edges blur a little when John’s watching. He doesn’t feel so invisible, which is an impossibility. He’s tall. People stare at him; certainly he’s compelling, perhaps even beautiful. But somehow John watching him brings him into greater focus.

Dimmock and his minions trot off to perform mundane investigative tasks like toxicology reports and a shakedown of the building’s residents. Sherlock and John get pho, then return to Baker Street. They have a routine, one Sherlock’s come to rather like, much as he likes a perfectly tailored suit or an absorbing experiment, one John welcomes now they’ve worked out that bit about affection. Sherlock isn’t opposed to experimenting with emotions. If kissing sharpens Sherlock’s drive during a case and keeps John close, keeps him in that pleasantly available frame of mind, Sherlock will give him what he needs.

Inside the front door they shed their coats, then Sherlock takes the stairs two at a time. John follows, but more slowly. Not his leg. Something else, something Sherlock will sort out after. He closes the door and bends to kiss John.

John turns his head to the side and leans away. Tension sparks between them like electricity running on high voltage wires, but there’s a different undercurrent, a different signal in the noise. John’s silence during the meal, his attention focused out the cab’s window, the downturned corners of his mouth as he climbed the stairs sharpen into a hum Sherlock recognizes. He runs a tab with people, adding more and more to the debit side of the ledger, until the bill comes due. The presence of this signal is familiar, even if John waited longer than most.

It’s time for Sherlock to pay for what he is.

 

 

 

*

Sherlock could refuse, of course, but he doesn’t. He closes his eyes briefly. “All right.”

He remains still when John reaches up and lays his blunt, deft fingers on one side of Sherlock’s jaw, and his thumb on the other. His eyes are shadowed and too dark to read when he’s backlit by the streetlights from Baker Street. He backs Sherlock into the wall beside the door.

It’s a rather pedestrian attempt on John’s part to assert dominance, to mark his territory. It’s so unimaginative. It might even be embarrassingly laughable, given that John’s fourteen centimeters shorter than Sherlock.

But John doesn’t shove Sherlock to his knees. Instead, his hand slides down Sherlock’s throat, pauses briefly with his thumb on Sherlock’s pulse _only slightly elevated_ then releases each straining button of his shirt in a measured fashion until he reaches Sherlock’s belt. Moving at an equally unhurried pace he tugs the shirt tails from Sherlock’s waistband. With a hand on the bare skin on either hip, John leans in just enough to nudge his mouth up at Sherlock’s.

The resulting contact isn’t even a kiss, but rather a skimming, open-mouthed caress that sends sparks skittering along Sherlock’s nerves. Almost immediately John ends it by looking down. His mouth rests against Sherlock’s bared collarbone as he leans his hips into Sherlock’s pelvis, then backs off again. This time when he tips his head up he breathes heat and humidity onto Sherlock’s mouth before his tongue slides across Sherlock’s lower lip. Then he looks down again.

John’s not bringing Sherlock down to his level with a fist in his hair, or forcing him to his knees. The data stream distracts Sherlock.

_John’s not thinking about the difference in our height at all. He kisses up as if he’s done this before and it’s utterly irrelevant who’s taller because he knows how to angle his head, capture a mouth from below, make skin and nerves hum with the desire to bend for more. John is 169 cm tall. The average British male is 175 cm tall. The average British woman is 162 cm, but John wouldn’t use a meaningless measurement like height to determine if he found a woman attractive, and he’s brazen enough to pull a woman taller than he is. Or a man._

_Don’t think about the men._

_John in uniform, kissing a fellow soldier._

_A younger John in med school, kissing a fellow student, taking a laughing, hands-on approach to anatomy and physiology lectures._

_John laughing._

 

Why do people laugh?

 

 

 

*

Sherlock jolts back into the moment when John lifts that narrow mouth again for glancing contact. For a man who made an incredible fuss over kissing, John’s not really kissing him. At the moment he’s using his mouth to nudge the fabric almost off Sherlock’s shoulders, then stretching up ever so slightly, offering temptation again. Sherlock’s not used to being kissed like this, mouth offered but not forced.

He’s not used to being kissed at all.

He wants it, though. He doesn’t want to want it, yet still he does. But Sherlock knows what’s coming, and it’s started gently before. Still, when John’s fingers trail along his ribs, heat and scent rising from his nape, Sherlock’s lips begin to tingle. In a moment of weakness he leans forward and uses his chin against John’s temple to indicate desire, sheer dumb animal nuzzling. John immediately lifts his face to Sherlock’s. He opens his mouth, breathing heat and humidity onto Sherlock’s mouth, but draws away before Sherlock can slip his tongue between John’s teeth.

A tremor rolls through Sherlock. He exhales, steels himself, but as a slow minute passes, need returns, and he once again nuzzles into John’s temple. He wants that mouth, that quiet, strong mouth, the mouth that never calls him names.

John somehow echoes his thoughts. “Your mouth,” he growls as he looks up. “Your fucking mouth.”

“You might actually put it to use,” Sherlock says, to see what happens.

He gets a kiss.

There’s a hint of a smile in it. Sherlock realizes John’s not on his toes anymore because Sherlock’s been tempted into bending forward, chasing John’s mouth. John gives him a slow slide of tongue inside his lip before breaking the contact yet again to use his hands. They skim up to Sherlock’s shoulders, exposing more skin before gripping Sherlock’s hip and nape. There’s a moment of full body contact when John leans into Sherlock’s body. Electric heat slides down Sherlock’s spine, lifts the hair on his nape and arms.

John palms Sherlock’s cock through his trousers, and Sherlock gasps. Then those clever fingers work at the button and hook of Sherlock’s trousers. It takes a fair bit of fumbling to open the zip, then work pants and trousers down to the tops of his thighs which is odd, because a trained medical professional who fired a bullet through two windows and into a man’s heart doesn’t fumble. Sherlock realizes John’s making him feel what’s happening, each motion, the separate sensations of John’s fingers on hip and buttock.

That mouth gets offered again, just as John’s hand closes around Sherlock’s cock. Sherlock doesn’t hesitate. He leans forward, into the kiss, into the sheer heat and talent of John’s mouth. This time it’s explicit, tongue gliding against his, drawing his in, then confidently tracing the edge of his teeth before John breaks it off again.

A groan shudders out of Sherlock’s chest. He recognizes these peaks and valleys. He wants. Needs. Craves.

He curves around John, reaches for him before he comes to his senses, remembers what’s coming. John doesn’t seem to notice his withdrawal. He’s looking down at his hand, working Sherlock’s cock slowly. He’s hard, his foreskin almost fully retracted.

Tremors eddy through Sherlock. _Hurry this along._ “I’m ready, John.”

John says nothing, simply leans his shoulder into Sherlock’s side and bends forward to rest his head on Sherlock’s chest. There’s a soft, wet sound. Sherlock tips his head to the side to confirm what he’s heard.

John has spit directly onto Sherlock’s cock, leaving a pool of saliva on the broad shaft.

Oh, _Christ._

John dips the tip of his middle finger into the spit, collecting it before he slides his hand between Sherlock’s thighs. When the wet tip of John’s finger presses against Sherlock’s anus, the throb of his pulse drives a groan from his chest. The ring of muscle contracts, then flares, admitting John’s finger. He works it shallowly, slowly, coaxing Sherlock to open.

More spit. This time two fingers trail through the wetness that is nowhere useful on Sherlock’s cock. The extra slips down the shaft and along his balls as two fingers slide into his arse.

His head drops back against the wall. Muscles move without conscious intent, but thanks to his trousers halfway down his thighs, not far enough. He can’t spread his legs. He needs to spread his legs. He needs to kiss John, too. He ignores most of his body’s urges, but _spread your legs and writhe_ comes from a place in his reptilian brain John’s somehow working at with those two fingers, sending sparks up his spine. He works his fingers into Sherlock’s arse, stroking and twisting and curving until the maddeningly faint pressure on his prostate and sweaty contact between his legs drives him mad.

A faint ripping noise echoes into the flat as a seam gives a little. Sherlock’s wearing a bespoke suit, so ripping the stitches takes some work. John leans his weight into Sherlock, pinning him to the wall, and grips his shaft with his other hand. He turns his face up to Sherlock’s, and with Sherlock bent over, their mouths are level, and oh God, he needs this so badly. The kiss is tongue and teeth and lips working against each other. It’s hot enough to sear his skin and connected on a feedback loop with John’s fingers in his arse.

John works Sherlock’s foreskin over the wet flesh of his glans to the same rhythm as his fingers glide into Sherlock’s arse. The pleasure heats, thickens, draws him to curve around John. He clutches at John’s waist and shoulder, reduced to full-body writhing against the man pinning him to the wall.

“Come on, John.” He’s used the deep voice before, the longing sounds and pants and huffs, to hurry things along and get them over with, but this it doesn’t sound filthy. Something he recognizes wars with the lust, something he thought he’d conquered.

He’s on the edge of pleading. He knows it, even if John doesn’t, but Sherlock pleads for nothing.

John draws back, his blue eyes ocean dark in the unlit flat. He studies Sherlock, and for once Sherlock fears what his face reveals. “Upstairs,” John says.

 

 

 

*

John’s bedroom is colder than Sherlock’s, the room darker because the window’s smaller. He’s not been in this room since that night, the night he took John apart, then held him through the shudders afterwards. He doesn’t want to need this. He doesn’t. But he does need it. He needs John Watson. The thought of the smaller man finding out exactly how badly would be like John knowing exactly familiar he is with Lady Jane’s circumstances.

“Strip,” John says quietly.

He watches Sherlock divest himself jacket and shirt, then the trousers he’d hiked up to his hips to climb the stairs. John takes off his shirt, but leaves his jeans on. He puts one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder to guide him around and onto the bed, arranging Sherlock on his knees facing the headboard. John kneels between Sherlock’s calves and shifts them wider, then plants a hand on Sherlock’s nape and pushes. “Down.”

His cock and balls dangle as Sherlock goes to all fours. His heart is racing, desire melding with memory to both harden his cock and make sweat break out on his temples and the base of his spine. Unsatisfied with this position, John applies pressure with his palm. “All the way. Hands on the wall. Don’t move.”

Familiar territory stretches in front of Sherlock. Back in the Land of Bored, he flattens his forearms against the wall to provide resistance. Oh yes, he knows this. Knows it well. A hard fuck is a punishing fuck only if the bottom isn’t sliding away with each rut.

John leans forward, bring his hips into contact with Sherlock’s exposed arse as he rummages in the nightstand for lube. Tube in hand, he sits back. Sherlock hears the lid click open, the slight gurgle as the viscous liquid squirts onto John’s fingers. The cold gel makes his anus clench briefly as his brain struggles to adjust to the new, slicker sensation. Everything heats quickly as John slowly works in what feels like three fingers, stretching Sherlock.

_It’s not rough. Why is it not rough? It should be rough. It’s always been rough. If the point of this exercise is to punish me for what I am, it should be rough._

But it’s not. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, gentle, which is confusing. John’s using his body well, the firm hand on his hip somehow both possessive and purposefully holding Sherlock in place. After all, he’s done this before with no more lubricant than spit and what’s on the condom. Physical pain took a while to materialize, what with the shakes, then the high. It came with the crash, lingers even today in the blackness following a case, subtle psychic mnemonics of shame and ignominy.

_What is going on? What is this?_

“Do it,” he rumbles, or tries to rumble. He lacks enough oxygen to deepen his voice.

“Shhhh. Not yet.”

Sherlock buries his face in his forearms. The incongruity between his expectations and his moment-by-moment experience would intrigue him if John’s fingers weren’t finding his prostate with relentless accuracy, stroking sensation into his cock and balls. Thought slips away into the bright-burning fire. Sherlock’s panting, but John’s breathing evenly, not rushed or shallow like the others. Even and steady and reassuringly John.

Uncertainty rends his heart, and  forces one hand from the wall to clasp his nape. He’s rocking back to meet John’s fingers and forward to thrust his aching cock into the air. “John, yes…”

John’s fingers slip out. The orgasm building dissipates while John slicks his cock. Sherlock’s so open John’s glans penetrates easily, but when the hard shaft breaches the ring of muscle, John pauses. He rocks, slow and smooth but shallow. Sensation trickles along nerves teased into hyper-sensitivity, but John’s seemingly limitless patience stretches out the moment of entry. It’s the hardest part for Sherlock, the time between when his body belongs to him — and is an importuning vehicle to be used and ignored — and when it belongs to another — and the thing is done. It’s when he’s most vulnerable. Until now. Because John slides deep, his pelvis coming to rest against Sherlock’s buttocks, and the vulnerability doesn’t disappear when John’s inside him.

Unmoving.

The worst is not over. He’d never thought John could be cruel.

“Do you want me to beg? I will.”

Air huffs from John’s chest, but it’s not a laugh. “Shhhh,” he murmurs, stroking his palms down Sherlock’s ribs, over his hips, and back again.

John begins to move, slow, steady pushes and withdrawals that layers sensation over Sherlock’s screaming nerves. His cock is like heated iron, and his arse…he had no idea how hollow he was until John made space for himself inside Sherlock. He fists his hand in his hair whilst bracing the other forearm against the wall as John’s thrusts grow harder, if not faster. It’s too slow for Sherlock to process it, analyse it, categorise it into something he can sort and discard. John’s anchored him in time and space, and he’s making him _feel_.

He groans, then writhes against John when the exhalation of sound isn’t enough to satisfy his need. His knees slip on the sheets, dropping him lower and stretching the tendons in his groin. John’s cock slides impossibly deeper inside him, and Sherlock cries out.

John leans forward, teeth scraping Sherlock’s flexed shoulder blade, and growls. It’s slow and steady and deep and unfathomable, this thing John’s doing. It’s searing muscle to bone. It’s tightening like a vise around Sherlock’s heart.

It’s unnameable. Unbearable.

He cannot take this. He can’t. He knows what to say. _Come on. Harder. Fuck me give it to me fuck me hard._ Prepares to say it. But what comes out in a hushed, nearly inaudible whisper is “Please, John. I need you. Please.”

 

Oh.

 

 

 

 

*

His train of thought has derailed. Spectacularly. The locomotive’s crashed into the trees and the cars behind it are a tangle of metal and steam. That is an admission he never meant to make, never even knew he wanted to make. He’s spread open, vulnerable, possessed, trembling with need, and he’s just said something he can never, ever delete.

John pauses, bends over him, warm chest to Sherlock’s back, stroking his hands down Sherlock’s sides. “I’m right here,” he murmurs.

John moves again, this time picking up speed to go with the depth. There’s no more shallow. Each thrust slaps against Sherlock’s buttocks, and when John reaches round to grip Sherlock’s cock, Sherlock gives a deep, helpless groan. He uses the arm pressed against the wall to push himself back into John’s thrusts, and it’s quite possible when his fist loosens from his nape, there will be strands of hair between his fingers.

John’s gasping, one hand on Sherlock’s cock and the other holding his hip. Sherlock’s lost control of everything. His body, his voice, his breathing. Percussive beats of pleasure drive his orgasm up his shaft. His heart slams with bruising force against his breastbone, and his breath rasps hot and harsh in his throat. There’s a moment when everything freezes, then he drops into sensation. Release pounds through him, leaves him sobbing for air.

John groans, then his strong hands grip the tops of Sherlock’s thighs as he lunges forward, burying himself in Sherlock’s body. His shudders run through Sherlock, who’s too slack with shocked pleasure to resist what happens next.

John skims his hand up Sherlock’s damp back. Slowly he strokes his fingers along Sherlock’s, coaxing them to relax so he can lace their fingers together at Sherlock’s nape.

_Hot, damp skin, hair, pulse, breathing, connection._

Everything else functioned like a ball peen hammer tapping away, tap tap tapping away at his surface, creating a complex striation of cracks. At this, however, Sherlock shatters. Invisibly, soundlessly, he splinters into little shards on John’s bed.

A long beat of time passes. Without a word John — oblivious, placid John — withdraws and leaves the room. Sherlock lets his legs give way. He folds on his side to face the wall.

John returns to the bedroom. The mattress dips when he kneels beside Sherlock to clean him. He has a good bedside manner, this small, normal doctor. Quiet. Competent. Calm.

John curls up at his back and presses a kiss into Sherlock’s nape. “All right then?” he asks drowsily.

Sherlock doesn’t answer. He waits for John to fall asleep, then leaves the bed. His limbs are sluggish, thighs well-used, entire body reassembling slowly as he showers. Water courses over his body, and a word floats to the surface of his brain.

Seduction.

John just seduced him. Sounds like…deduction, but isn’t. He turns the concepts over in his head. They are two sides of the same coin, the knowing of another human being, the vulnerability inherent in either. One wielded like an iron fist and the other coaxed out with a velvet glove.

Why make the effort? He associates seduction with uncertain acquisition, energy to be expended only if he can’t just take. Sherlock after a case is no different from Sherlock in need of a fix. He’s as sure as sure can be.

Yet John expended the energy.

He’s an idiot.

Isn’t he?

 

 

 

*

It’s different with John asleep after, the encounter ending without sneers and jeers and a baggie tossed at him, the taste of latex coating the back of his throat, blood welling in a split lip.

It makes no sense.

John here kissing him makes no sense. Even with PTSD people like John, want to help him find a flatmate, deal with Sherlock. The Yard likes him quite well. People spend time with Sherlock and tell him to _piss off, fuck off, get the fuck away from me, freak_.

He wants to shake John awake, demand answers to the questions tearing through his head. He doesn’t. He watches the charcoal gray of London’s night fade to pewter, then to daylight, and ponders the possibility he doesn’t understand John at all.

 

 

 

*

Turns out John Watson is not a small man.

Sherlock watches him move around the flat the next morning. Showered and shaved, he makes tea and reads the paper while wearing jeans and a stolidly English jumper as if nothing at all out of the ordinary happened last night. His posture, demeanor, his face, until yesterday as clear as rain are now blank walls to Sherlock.

“Are you going to do that again?”

John looks up over the paper, his brow furrowed. Could be confusion. Could be irritation. Could be concern. John is frequently all three, and more, at once.

“Which part?”

_The part where you made me bend to kiss you._

_The part where you made me reach for you. I resisted as long as I could, until my hands flexed because the rest of my body was tight with longing._

_The part where you made me wait to beg until I couldn’t hide any longer._

“The part where you made me say I need you.”

Irritation disappears, leaving only confused concern, or concerned confusion.

“I made you say that?”

“I certainly didn’t intend to say it.”

John’s brows knit together more deeply. “Something wrong with that?”

“It was new information to me.”

It should not be possible for a man to both frown and lift an eyebrow, but John’s expressive face manages it. “Not to me.”

“You knew I need you.”

“You’re not the only one who can deduce, Sherlock.” John’s gaze skims over Sherlock’s tailored shirt, his suit, his shoes, clothes he’s wearing on a Sunday when he’d normally wear pajamas and his robe as he wades through the papers. “You don’t need help with the rent. As you so precisely demonstrated at the crime scene yesterday, whatever I offer during an investigation is usually wrong. I can’t shoot someone for you every time we track down a serial killer; Lestrade will connect the dots eventually. You could hire security if you wanted a handy, legal, gun. Either I’m an ambulatory version of the skull who’s finally learned to manage the automated checkout at Tesco and therefore keeps you in food, or you need me for me.”

He should tell John that was brilliant. It’s what John would say if he’d done it.

“Bit of a winger here, but something about last night surprised you.”

“You were gentle.”

“Not really.”

“I’ve had rougher.” His voice should be affectless. Instead it is low. Quiet. Telling.

John waits. He’s good at it. He’ll wait for Sherlock indefinitely. Sherlock associates waiting with having his fingernails pulled out with pliers, or fighting the need for a high.

“I humiliated you,” he says impatiently. “At the crime scene. I thought you would want…”

“Ah. A bit of my own back?”

“Revenge.”

John rests his jaw on two bent fingers, his index finger braced just under his cheekbone as he looks at his flatmate. “Sherlock, I survived medical school and a residency supervised by a woman who’d give you a run for your money in terms of both brilliance and arrogance. I then survived basic training and Afghanistan. _Don’t_ take this as a challenge, but better men — and women — than you have humiliated me, and far more publicly.”

Sherlock stares at him."So what was that?"

“You knew those flats well,” John says quietly. “You’d been there. You’d been her.”

The silence in the flat is thin and oddly wavy, distorting the traffic on Baker Street, BBC Radio 4 on in Mrs. Hudson’s flat as he stares at John. Mycroft and Mummy tried to bend Sherlock to their will. He refused to be manipulated. His death via overdose was prevented only by being discovered by the next person due at the flat for a transaction. His state, twenty pounds underweight, obviously sexually assaulted, and addicted almost beyond salvaging, transformed “tough love” into rehab and a more concerted effort to engage his strange, weird brain.

Put succinctly, he’d won. If he didn’t answer to Mycroft and Mummy, he didn’t answer to anyone.

But the memories of himself in that state — filthy, addicted, at the mercy of the cruel, the vicious, the stupid — disgust him. He thought they would disgust John.

He’s wrong. He is so rarely wrong. And John knows. John watches. John _sees_.

“How did you know?”

“My sister’s an alcoholic, Sherlock. Addictions make people do things they wouldn’t normally do. You are a genius, but you’re no exception. For two totally separate reasons, the odds of you trading sex for drugs with someone who wanted to make love are slim to none.”

He’d ridiculed John for asking for a kiss, and sees the value of it, but the concept of making love is as foreign and remote as the stars and planets. “Is that what we did?”

John shrugs. “Did it bore you?”

“No,” he says honestly. It terrified him, and terror is never boring.

John watches Sherlock closely. “Has anyone ever used his body to make you feel good? Not to take something from you, or teach you a lesson?”

The correct move here is not to answer, because John is playing a game Sherlock doesn’t know. The rules are indecipherable, based on the things he’s successfully shut away: emotions, sentiment, attachments. Need. He doesn’t know what this is. He doesn’t understand any of this. He cannot follow John’s train of thought, his motivations, his decisions. John is opaque to him. What he did, why he did it, what he drew out of Sherlock like a coiled gold wire tempered by time and desire, is entirely new.

John’s expressive face collapses into folds of sorrow and regret and sadness. His exhalation is not quite a sigh. “I’m not going to hurt you like that.”

_No. You’ll hurt me in other ways. And I will consume you. It’s what I am. I am a plague of locusts, a wake of vultures, a virus that consumes its host. I take and take and take until there’s nothing left. Don’t you understand that?_

 

 

 

*

He doesn’t. John has no idea what he’s dealing with. Whatever he thinks, whatever he imagines, it’s wrong.

Sherlock knows two things now. First, he needs John to watch him. Second, he does not manage needs well, so this, whatever _this_ is, will burn them both to the ground.

One way or another, this will _end_ them.


	3. One Temporary Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock’s married to his work. Moriarty’s the sexy, brilliant colleague. John’s a light in the window, dinner kept warm, and a cuppa.
> 
> Or is he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of hat tips to abundantlyqueer's Two Two One Bravo Baker series.
> 
> Musical influence: Young Blood by The Naked and Famous. See it here: [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuSg4mts9E)

John puts his hands on his hips and watches Sherlock mutter as he paces. He’s come to think of life with Sherlock in terms of the big cases and the consequences to John. There was the pink lady and John committing murder. There was the Chinese smuggling ring moonlighting as a theatre of the absurd that effectively ended any possibility of even friendship with Sarah. Then there were the terrified voices on the phone, a murderous giant, and a seemingly endless wait in the changing stall at a public pool before Sherlock’s showdown with “Jim from IT”.

The consequences to that scene at the pool haven’t quite fallen out yet, but John’s good at waiting. Something’s coming.

Something’s always coming when Sherlock’s around.

 

 

*

  
Not much surprises John anymore. People screaming at him, dying on him, or shooting at him desensitized him somewhat. What happened at the pool wasn’t even that humiliating, but it does trouble him. Moriarty could have kidnapped Molly or Mrs. Hudson — either one would have made an easier target and were of far more sentimental value to Sherlock  — or Lestrade — admittedly more difficult to surprise and overwhelm but with a far longer history with Sherlock than John had. Instead he took John.

Why John?

Then Moriarty disappeared, leaving John with a brand new nightmare in rotation with the chart-toppers from Afghanistan, this one filled with explosive blasts and debris and chlorinated water burning his nostrils as he rugby-tackles Sherlock into the pool after he shoots the vest. At least in the dream he’s useful, rather than bait. He likes being useful.

Right now he doesn’t feel useful. He feels like a mum. Life with Sherlock after The Pool is like managing a toddler. Not that John has, but he’s seen observed the techniques at clinic. He’s deploying them all: calm voice, firm statements, distracting, redirecting, bribing with lollys, because Sherlock is _bored_. Moriarty made life so very, very interesting, but now he’s off making some poor sod either rich or into shoes.

Jesus. What kind of person lived in the hell between those options?  

The detective whirls mid-pace and dives for the desk drawer. John snaps from reverie to sirens-wailing alert. “Sherlock, you can’t shoot — ”

A pause, silent except for the frantic thud of John’s heart because there’s some scrabbling and scuffling with a loaded weapon. John disarms Sherlock. His flatmate flops on the sofa and grinds the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

John watches him writhe. The Pool Incident, as he’s come to think of it, is weeks in the past. Sherlock can’t seem to let it go. At first John attributed this solely to Sherlock’s odd experiment with affection. He’s remarkably possessive about John, if demanding John’s near-constant presence and undivided attention equates with possessiveness. But after a while, John revises his conclusion. It’s not about John, or it might be. A little. A very little. But really it’s about Moriarty.

Sherlock considers himself married to his work.

Jim Moriarty is work.

He is most definitely _work_ , in every sense of the word. He’s the consulting criminal behind at least one case, which makes him the sexy, smart, edgy _colleague_ who livens up the shared bit of carpet: London’s back alleys and streets, wharves and bridges. Moriarty has captured Sherlock’s attention in a way John hasn’t, and can’t.

He’s not hurt by this. Not much, anyway. Mostly, John’s bewildered by Sherlock’s newfound obsession, because despite the extremely personal nature of getting manhandled into Semtex and a frankly too hot parka, John doesn’t find Moriarty all that interesting. John’s lived in a war zone. He’s seen crazy, psychopathic evil before. The details may vary but underneath, it’s boring. Banal. The sweat trickling down his back from the weight of his shirt and jumper, the vest, and the coat maddened him more than Moriarty’s stupid histronics. But that’s the difference between John and Sherlock. In a crisis John gets calmer, surer, more confident. On an ordinary day he couldn’t possibly shoot Jefferson Hope. But with a suicide pill inches from Sherlock’s mouth, he’s wicked ice, as the Americans medics from Boston used to say.

Until he can resolve a case, however, Sherlock gets more engaged. He can’t pace himself. He’s off or on, and Moriarty found new settings on Sherlock’s dial when he ended the Pool Incident on his terms, walking out of the pool and into thin air, leaving Sherlock to do what he doesn’t do well: wait. John’s left to manage an increasingly irritable, irascible, impatient consulting detective.

“Bored! Bored, bored, _bored!_ ”

“Sherlock, you can’t shoot the wall just because you're bored,” he finishes, clinging to his last nerve with his fingernails as he ejects the clip from the gun and stuffs it in his jeans pocket for safety. “I had a hell of a time explaining the gunshots to the police, and it frightens Mrs. Hudson.”

Another groan from the settee conveys the crashing dullness of John’s scruples.

John forges ahead. “What did you do before I moved in?”

“I danced.”

John blinks. “You — what?”

“I went to a club and I danced. After two months of rather tedious research I determined it the most efficient way to obtain a sexual partner for the night.”

John finds he’s still not all that surprised. “You went clubbing.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t done since I moved in.”

“I no longer need to go out in search of a blow job.”

Sherlock’s not getting one now, not like this. More to the point and less to the bait-John-into-seeing-blood-red portion of that statement, since John moved in, there’s been a string of cases. Good ones. Challenging ones.

Then Moriarty. Who’s gone. The _bastard_.

John quite likes dancing, but ever since he was invalided he struggles with the noise, crowded spaces, the frantic, flailing aimlessness of it all. On the other hand, it’s a relatively innocuous way to achieve a high.

He’s found his lolly. “Fine. Get dressed. We’re going clubbing.”

“What?”

“Except for the pull a stranger for a blow job part. That’s right out.”

“Dull,” Sherlock mutters, but it’s a formality because he bounds off the sofa, into his room.

John suffers a moment of self-consciousness about what to wear to go out with the best dressed, best looking man in London, then arrives at his most pragmatic decision. He’s going to sweat like squaddie on a twenty klick march and because he intends to remain sober, will end up wearing more beer than he drinks. Washable is the fashion watchword of the night. So he keeps on his jeans and exchanges his button down for a gray t-shirt, then laces his feet into sturdy brogues with thick soles.

When he reaches the sitting room Sherlock’s waiting for him, dressed in dark jeans, the tight white button down shirt that strains across his chest, and brown dress shoes. When he sees John his gaze narrows and he goes from tortured Gothic heroine to consulting detective in the blink of an eye. “You’re carrying yourself differently.”

“What? I’m not doing any — “

“Shut up.”

Sherlock’s one snapped answer away from getting punched. John tightens his grip on his last nerve and shuts his mouth. Sherlock circles John at a prowl, and John stands under the scrutiny. Heat radiates from Sherlock’s body, but it’s the attention that sends shivers along John’s spine.

“You’re carrying yourself like a _soldier_.”

He is. Without conscious thought he’d put on clothes he’d worn in red light districts all over Europe and Asia: jeans, t-shirt, shoes to back up his fists and elbows and knees if he and his mates ran into someone looking for a fight. All he needs is a strip of condoms in his pocket and a knife in his boot.

“I _was_ a soldier. This is the sort of thing I’d wear on leave,” he says as he makes a conscious effort to relax his shoulders and slump his spine.

“No. Don’t.”

The hushed baritone eddies along his nerves. “Don’t what?”

Sherlock circles him again, trailing his fingers across John’s collarbone, across the scar tissue in his wounded shoulder, across his shoulder blades held tightly together, to his good shoulder. “Don’t be normal. I like this.”

Trust Sherlock to delete John’s military service (unless someone needs killing) until the kink possibilities become clear. But, John just got interesting. More interesting than Moriarty.

That’s more than fine with John. Moriarty may be dull, but John’s not quite right after the pool, either. What happens in a war zone isn’t personal. What happened at the pool also wasn’t personal, despite being full of murderous intention. No, he was just a way for Moriarty to get leverage against Sherlock. John won’t stop being that leverage, and being used to get to Sherlock incenses him.

Deliberately he turns his head and looks at Sherlock. The detective stands to John’s right, two fingers still resting in the hollow where John’s good shoulder meets his collarbone, applying just enough pressure to signal John should square up again. He’s not a man with a habit of looking in the mirror, but his body settles into a near-forgotten-but-still-familiar arrangement of skin over muscle and bone. It’s his _I’m a soldier and a doctor so I can set your bones and stitch you up after you fuck with me and lose_ stance.  

Sherlock’s eyelids droop, and one corner of his mouth lifts ever so slightly. Without a word he slides his phone into his front jeans pocket. There’s a delicious, heady surge of adrenalin as John does likewise, then follows Sherlock down the stairs. His body somehow knows that being a simple London doctor isn’t the right response to this situation, complex and amorphous as it is.

Sherlock’s texting as he strides out the door, barely looking up to hail one of the cabs that mysteriously appear for him. He gives an address to the cabbie, but says nothing to John. He focuses on London slipping past and keeps his phone in his hand. John copies his distant manner until his phone buzzes with an incoming text.

He pulls his phone from his pocket as Sherlock slips his away. _I’ll find you._

Sherlock exits the cab as soon as it pulls to a stop in front of a nightclub, leaving John to pay the fare. When John reaches the door Sherlock is nowhere to be seen.

“Go on in, mate,” the bouncer says. “It’s been taken care of.”

Shocking. Sherlock rarely remembers to pay for groceries or cabs, much less John’s admission to a nightclub. John walks into a wall of sound and movement, and makes his way through the crush of bodies to the bar. He orders a pint, and waits. He’s good at it, and it even keeps him in character. The Army was excellent training in hurry up and wait.

While he waits he thinks about what brought them here. In John’s mind Moriarty’s disappearance was a calculated, purposeful move. But Sherlock’s still dancing to his tune, whether he realized it or not, which meant John’s dancing right along with him. He doesn’t mind being a tool, as long as he decides how he’s used, and by whom.

The list of approved puppeteers does not include a genuine psychopath.

It does, apparently, include one self-identified sociopath.

John drinks his beer, and waits.

 

 

*

 

Forty-five minutes later Sherlock materializes at his elbow. He lounges back against the bar and studies the crowd, his eyes flickering in what John’s come to see as his processing expression. He’s taking in data as fast as a super-computer, and John prays he keeps his deductions to himself. The bar’s patrons are drunk and raucous. John’s up to the task of extracting Sherlock from this room should his mouth get them into trouble, but he’d really rather not.

“Fancy a fuck?” Sherlock asks without looking at John.

John swallows his laugh, because it’s not a bit funny. Sherlock’s used that line successfully. “Looking for a bit of rough?”

“How did you know?”

John swallows what remains of his pint. “Toffs like you always are,” he says as he sets his glass on the bar.

The conversation strays a little too close to a dynamic they don’t discuss, likely because it wouldn’t occur to Sherlock unless it had bearing on a case. Sherlock has money, an education, a brain and the connections to work wherever and however he wants. Given an interest in mundane matters like money and status, Sherlock would own England. He’s living with John and solving cases because he gets off on it, and Moriarty is far more interesting than commodities or investment banks or the sodding global economy.

John’s employable. He has friends he can call if it comes to that, but none he’d inflict his wrecked self on, and none in the circles Sherlock could move in if he so chose. He could evaporate into London’s rarefied ether and out of John’s life like water in the desert.

“Do you oblige?” Sherlock asks lazily.

His shirt’s undone one more button down his chest than when they left the flat, and he’s using his plummiest Oxbridge accent. If John bit into it, juice would run down his chin, sticky sweet and fresh. It would drip from the heel of his hand until he licked it off his wrist.

“No,” John says flatly.

“Shame,” Sherlock says, and wanders off.

 

 

*

 

The next time John sees Sherlock he’s in the middle of the dance floor, and putting on quite the show. His partner’s almost as tall as he is, and the way they move together all but screams that they’ve fucked. The man has his hands on Sherlock’s hips, long fingers flexing as he spins Sherlock around, back to front. A whoop goes up from someone in the crowd, and the whole thing gets impossibly raunchier. The man wraps one arm around Sherlock’s waist; Sherlock lifts his arms over his head and swivels his hips against him. The man rests his chin on Sherlock’s shoulder and murmurs something in his ear.

Sherlock grins and turns to look at John. When their eyes meet, he winks. Bloody winks at his flatmate and lover as he slides his hand back to cup his partner’s head.

John sees red. Bright, blinding, signal red. What he does, however, is to shape a single word with his lips.

_Bor-ing._

He turns to the barkeep. “Water,” he says.

“You sure, mate? Another pint looks like it would go down smooth.”

“Just the water.”

One of them should be in his right mind. Sherlock’s already out of his head with boredom, petulant like a child whose friend has taken his ball and gone home. He considers his options. He could stride onto the dance floor and pull Sherlock away. He’s a good dancer, and he knows how to make Sherlock move better than his current partner, who’s pretty enough, but has the wrong pace, the wrong attitude.

Or he could make Sherlock come to him.

A few minutes later, Sherlock reappears at John’s side. “Feel more obliging now?”

John still doesn’t look at him. “Maybe,” he says with a glance at the dance floor, not bothering to lower his voice, “Your little show was proof positive you need that attitude fucked right out of you.”

Sherlock relaxes back on his elbows, long frame lounging with his hips blatantly far forward. Sweat dampens his temples and the hollow of his throat. “Others have tried,” he says mildly. “And failed. You look like you might be up to the task, _Captain_.”

John just smiles at him. “What’s in it for me?”

One hand trails across John’s hip as Sherlock spins to face John, then leans into the bar, both arms bracketing John’s torso. John doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move. He also doesn’t shove Sherlock back, which is his first instinct in his current frame of mind. Sherlock notices, of course. His eyes, if possible, gleam even brighter as he leans forward.

“Risk,” Sherlock breathes into his ear. “The chance to fuck me.”

They’re the same thing, and John knows it.

Sherlock pushes away and strides off without a backwards glance.

John follows, but then he always does.

 

 

 

*

 

He takes an elbow to the kidney and steps on heels and toes before they find space on the dance floor. The music segues into a synth-pop song with a spangly keyboard opening notes before the drums and guitar kick in, and the vaguely military cadence to the drumbeat that seems appropriate. Sherlock drops low, bringing their hips in alignment and his mouth to John’s cheek. He reaches around to flatten his hands at John’s nape and the base of John’s spine. John weaves their legs together and mirrors Sherlock’s grip, carding his fingers through damp curls, fisting them in sweat-soaked cotton, the better to feel muscles moving in Sherlock’s back. As the drums beat and the vocalist sings about moods that change like the wind, they grind back and forth.  
  
Hard to control when it begins/  
The bittersweet between my teeth/  
Trying to find the in between/  
Fall back in love eventually  
  
It’s not a performance designed to attract every eye in the place. It’s not a show. It’s chemistry so hot it threatens to incinerate the club and everyone in it, simple, raw, and as elementally sexual as they can get without being naked. John knows they will be naked before long. He’s half-hard, and Sherlock’s cock is thickening in his jeans. His face is flushed, his eyes glittering. The last time John saw him that alive was the moment at the pool when he looked at John with a question in his eyes, then aimed the gun at the vest.

Guns and fucking, danger and death, and dancing.  This shouldn’t work. Wounded, weary, wary John Watson and the Freak. They shouldn’t work on the dance floor, or in the flat, or at crime scenes, or in bed. But they do. Now that the threat’s clear, anyway. Maybe Mycroft was right. John’s wired for this, been trained to like it. Need it. Get off on it.

Heat courses through his veins, and sweat trickles down his temple and spine. He sees the moment Sherlock loses himself in sensation, the noise and crush and pounding rhythm becoming a channel for the frenzy inside. He pulls Sherlock’s forehead down to his as the drum beats like a pulse.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he growls.

One corner of that improbable mouth lifts slightly. “Of course you are. I always get what I want.”

Sherlock leads him off the back of the dance floor and down a darkened hallway to a door at the end marked Office. He opens it to reveal an typical office: desk, chair, filing cabinet, dusty fake plants and one surprisingly healthy aspidistra, and a low settee upholstered in incongruous red velvet. The beat from the music thumps under their feet and through the walls.

The reason for his easy access to the bar becomes clear. “You know the owner,” John says.

“I identified the employees using the bar to distribute drugs,” Sherlock says as he locks the door. “He owes me a favor.”

John slumps back on the couch, laces his fingers together behind his head, and studies Sherlock. His medical and officer training are in play, so his natural deference is gone, as is his patience, and his grip on his temper. Sherlock’s got a thing for the uniform. Time to play.

“Shirt off.”

Sherlock complies. His hands are steady, but he’s watching John as he peels sweat-soaked cotton from his torso and drops it to the floor. John studies him. Christ, he’s gorgeous. Dressed he looks deceptively thin but under the clothes he’s heavy muscle and bone. The jeans ride low on his hips, and his dark curls cling to forehead and temples. Pale eyes focus on John as if he’s the only thing on Sherlock’s mind.

“On your knees.”

“Yes, Captain.”

It should sound like bad dialogue from a porn film. It should make John laugh. Instead it makes him helplessly hard, because Sherlock says them while he’s holding John’s gaze, then obeys. He kneels between John’s spread legs, folding the first crease in what will become the complicated origami of sex.

John doesn’t move. For a long minute he continues to study Sherlock, who’s not bothering to pretend to be deferential. Then John reaches out and traces that improbably full lower lip with the tip of his index finger. “You’ve a pretty mouth,” he says.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Use it on me.”

Sherlock doesn’t bother with preliminaries. He pushes John’s t-shirt up, plucks open his buckle and fly, then jerks jeans and pants down to John’s ankles. He leans into the space between John’s knees, rings thumb and forefinger at the base of John’s cock to draw it away from his abdomen, then licks around the ridge of his foreskin, working it back from his glans. John watches, heat pulsing in his veins. Sherlock licks his lips extravagantly and swallows John to the root before pulling back with enough suction to make John groan. Sherlock’s lovely mouth is nothing short of a miracle when John’s cock stretches his pink lips into a heart all the filthier for the sweetness of the shape.

“Again. Slow.”

As it should, his army command voice secures immediate obedience. Over the next few minutes the only adjectives John can call from his brain are _wet_ and _tight_ ; Sherlock’s technique is perfectly calibrated to suck pressure and heat into John’s balls and up his shaft. He closes his eyes and sinks into luxurious sensation, until the edge draws too close for comfort.

“Stop.”

Sherlock stops. John opens his eyes to see Sherlock looking up at him, the tip of John’s cock lying against his tongue, perfectly framed by his red, swollen, wet mouth. He gives a closed-mouth groan and shifts his hips. “We need slick.”

Still holding his gaze and his glans in his mouth, Sherlock reaches into John’s front pocket and extracts a travel-sized tube.

“I didn’t bring that.”

Sherlock smiles at him. John remembers the way Sherlock’s wrist ghosted over his hip at the bar and just shakes his head. He takes the tube, then makes a beckoning motion with his fingers. “Give me your hand.”

Sherlock closes his mouth around the head of John’s cock as John drags a generous strip of lube across the tips of Sherlock’s fingers. John heels off his shoes and extracts one leg from his jeans. He lies back and grips the curved back of the sofa behind his head, and plants one foot on the edge of the sofa, exposing the cleft of his arse. “Keep going. Slow.”

Sherlock smears the lubricant against John’s anus, then pushes one finger in past the second knuckle. John groans again, this time unable to keep his mouth closed. “Je- _sus_.”

Sherlock finds John’s prostate with each gliding stroke, brushing it just enough to make John’s cock twitch in his mouth. He’s lightened his suction to compensate for the fingers, now two, now three, twisting in a wide arc every few strokes. John’s pulse beats hard at the base of his shaft before he once again orders Sherlock to stop.

“Unzip.”

Sherlock does. His cock flexes free, thick and red and leaking copiously. John smiles as he leans down to run the palm of his hand from tip to base, then firmly tug Sherlock’s balls down.

“Get up here and slick up,” he murmurs into Sherlock’s ear as Sherlock trembles.

Sherlock turns his head so his mouth rests against John’s ear. “Yes, Captain,” he murmurs back, low and dark and  deceptively subordinate.

It’s John’s turn to quiver.

They change seats. Sherlock’s tight jeans slip low on his hips as he shifts his weight from his knees to his arse. He leans back, his hips once again lounging forward, and smears lubricant along his cock. John straddles him and trails his fingers over that long, elegant torso, along his sternum, down Sherlock’s abdomen to his hip.

“Hold yourself for me,” he says.

Sherlock reaches under John’s thigh. One hand grips his cock, as ordered, and the other grips John’s upper arm. He’s exposed like this, vulnerable, and John wants him that way, wants to break through the chaos in his mind, a process that’s easier if he keeps Sherlock off-balance. The length of his body is open and available. John’s got both hands braced on the sofa back on either side of Sherlock’s head as he plays a little, purposefully missing the mark, until Sherlock shifts under him.

They both groan when Sherlock’s cock finally pushes that first, sweet bit inside. John pins Sherlock’s hips to the couch while he works himself down. Sherlock opened him nicely but John still takes his time, absorbing every sparking sensation, shifting and circling until Sherlock’s head is tipped back against the wall, his throat straining, his mouth open in a silent groan.

Head still tilted against the wall, Sherlock grips the back of the sofa with one hand and John’s upper arm with the other as John rides him. The long lines of his exposed triceps, throat, and torso beautifully complement each other. When Sherlock begins to thrust up, John slows and holds his hips too high for Sherlock to get a satisfying thrust. The position works Sherlock’s sensitive glans where John can feel it most. Sherlock’s feet in their hard-soled shoes slip on the gritty floor until he gets them braced under his knees so he can lift his hips and rock up.

The sharp beat sends heat pulsing along John’s every nerve. He carefully situates himself so Sherlock doesn’t hit his prostate, keeping him near the edge but not at it. “Fuck, that’s…oh God, that’s good. Work for it, gorgeous.”

Sherlock’s head drops forward. One of his hands cards through his hair, then grips it as tightly as the other grips John’s arm. It’s a stress reaction, one John’s come to look for. Sherlock doesn’t have many tells but this one signals loud and clear that he’s dropped into a headspace where he can’t process, can’t control, analyze, sort. His eyes, were they to open, would be blown wide with shocked defenselessness, lost in heat and rhythm.   

“Harder,” John growls. “Come on. Fuck. _Now._ ”

Sherlock gasps and does as John orders. His head falls back again, exposing the long line of his throat and the etched muscles of his abdominal wall. John lifts one hand from the wall and closes his fingers around Sherlock’s neck, tight enough to feel his pulse, air working in and out of his taxed lungs, and vibrations so low they hum under the thumping bass, the sharp slaps and huffs of their fucking.

Sherlock’s releasing a big, brazen rumble of sound, and the only way John can sense it is to nearly cut off his air supply. “Jesus Christ,” he gasps.

Sherlock comes, arching for as much contact as he can get. At the first pulse John thuds down, using the rocking momentum to shove Sherlock’s hips hard against the red velvet, giving him the heat of his body, his full weight to push against. Sherlock’s grip on his biceps will surely leave a ring of finger bruises, but Sherlock’s flushed, open-mouthed, sobbing release makes it all worthwhile.

That’s better, John thinks. He’s rock hard, aching, leaking, but Sherlock’s fucking _plastered_ to the couch.

Then Sherlock opens his eyes. The word _predatory_ comes to mind, then disappears as quickly because it’s utterly inadequate. _Feral_ might do. John scrabbles for the lubricant, stripes it across Sherlock’s palm. Sherlock grips John’s cock and John gasps as his vision explodes. Blind and desperate, he reaches out for whatever he can grip, which turns out to be Sherlock’s damp hair. He spreads his knees and drops his hips low for the sheer pleasure of feeling his balls rasp over Sherlock’s abdomen while he fucks Sherlock’s hand. Hard. Muscles bunch in Sherlock’s arm and shoulder as he provides uncompromising resistance.

He’s _fuck it’s so good Jesus fuck slick tight_ getting close when he feels Sherlock’s softening cock slip out of him, to be replaced by two deft fingers that twist and stroke over his prostate. Sherlock’s come lubricates each stroke and seeps out around his fingers; if that’s not the hottest thing John’s ever felt, he doesn’t know what is. Groaning helplessly, he drops his head back and slows, trying to prolong it.

No use. Instinct swamps him. He grinds and drives and shoves until his vision goes black. His release feels like a giant fist reaches inside him and rips out his soul, handful by ferocious handful.

When he opens his eyes he sees come spattered to Sherlock’s collarbone and neck. Without thinking at all, he bends forward and sets his tongue to the slippery fluid, working it into Sherlock’s skin, into his pulse, before licking him clean. The sliding pressure of his tongue draws another rumbling groan from Sherlock’s chest.

 

 

*

   
  
Sherlock plucks a roll of paper towels from the top of the filing cabinet to John’s right. Side by side on the sofa they clean up, fasten clothing. John unknots his shoelaces, then loosens the eyelets. Next to him Sherlock drags his discarded shirt over his arms and buttons it.

“Better?” John asks as he works his foot into his left shoe.

“God, yes,” Sherlock purrs. He’s satiated, limp, a conduit for the bass pulsing in the walls and floor. The energy’s still there but dialed rather down, like a big cat after a good feed.

“Not going to go after my gun when we get home?” John asks, tightening the laces.

“Oh, I might,” Sherlock says, then lowers his voice. “Captain Watson.”

Filthy. Absolutely filthy. But they cannot explain away more gunshots to the Met, and it would be absolutely stupid to waste Lestrade’s supply of favors on something preventable. Knowing Sherlock, they’re going to need them later.

“Do that and you’ll get the fucking you’re asking for,” John says matter-of-factly, as he stomps into the second shoe.  

Sherlock’s eyelids droop, his lashes thick and straight against the pale flush receding from his cheeks. A tremor rolls through his sprawled body, sending aftershocks through John’s. “The one I didn’t get tonight? Hands and knees, you pounding into me?”

“That’s the one,” John sings out as he snugs up the knots, then gets to his feet.

A fire blazes up in Sherlock’s eyes as he looks up at John from his sprawl on the sofa.

“Christ,” John says. “It’s an illegal firearm, not a sex toy, Sherlock.”

“Po- _tay_ -to, po- _tah_ -to,” Sherlock replies lazily.

That baritone caresses the vowels like his tongue caresses the tip of John’s cock. He makes a mental note to hide the clip, then takes a deep breath and tackles head-on what they’ve been dancing around for weeks. Because this isn’t about his gun, and they both know it. Sherlock’s burning too brightly to sustain this level of engagement.

“You have to let him go, Sherlock.” Sherlock’s expression darkens, draws inward, but John presses on. “Moriarty. He’s gone. For now. You must let it go. Because he’ll be back.”

“I can’t _let him go_ , John.”

“Not forever, of course not, but a strategic retreat — ”

“On his part. Not mine.”

Sherlock’s ego just might be the death of him. John takes a firm hold on his temper. “Shut up and listen to me. First thing you learn in medical training, then in the Army. You rest when you can rest. Eat when you can eat. Keep your strength up for whatever’s coming, because something’s coming. While he’s occupied elsewhere, you need to focus on other things.”

“Don’t attempt to critique my methods, John.” Dismissive. Superior. As if John’s tiny little mind can’t understand.

But John does understand this. Sherlock knows how to win, but John’s fought battles to a draw, lost others to ignominious defeat. Trying to capture Moriarty is like trying to contain mercury, the drops splitting into smaller and smaller beads, toxic to handle. The same analogy could describe Sherlock, but John shoves that aside. “He’s tailor-made to prey on you.”

“He threatened you,” Sherlock snaps.

“Doesn’t count unless he kills me,” John says, repeating something he picked up from a group of commandos he treated after a firefight. Sherlock shoots him a narrow-eyed, assessing look John can’t decipher. “He threatened you, too. You were there.”

At that Sherlock all but rolls his eyes, as if when death comes for him he’ll deduce the Grim Reaper into buggering off. “He wasn’t going to blow himself up,” he says dismissively.

Moriarty had looked quite surprised when Sherlock leveled the gun at the vest, as if the thought of sacrifice hadn’t factored into his evil scheme. Sherlock is as unpredictable as Moriarty, but John…John is built for sacrifice. His nod gave heft to Sherlock’s threat, and Sherlock didn’t hesitate to use him that way.

“He played you with the countdown timers, and he’s playing you now.” Playing was too mild a word. Like the worst schoolyard bully, Moriarty has his claws in Sherlock’s brain for a sustained, rutting mindfuck.

“He has frankly appalling taste in music,” Sherlock muses, as if that’s as relevant as laser sights, and explosions, and helpless noncombatants in Semtex vests.  

“Sherlock.”

“That ringtone. My God. So theatrical.”

John bites his tongue. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock looks at his interlaced hands, then up at John. “I’m alive, John,” he says.

The words vibrate much as Sherlock’s throat did under John’s hand, minutes before. He recognizes these fierce vibrations, from men who’ve survived IEDs, firefights, RPG attacks, so for a minute he thinks Sherlock means they survived the pool. Then he realizes Sherlock, like the soldiers he treated, needs this — the chase, the competition, the battle — to bring him most fully alive. He misses the war and he wasn’t even there.

John’s diaphragm spasms as if he’s had the wind knocked out of him.

Affection was nothing but a pipe dream. There will be no in between. Not now. Maybe not ever.

If he’s going to let go, now is the time to do it. Before it’s too late. He’s known men like this before. He was in the sodding Army, for Christ’s sake. At some level he _is_ a man like this. He knows Sherlock, and what little he’s seen of Moriarty convinces him that however this crazy, entangled, destructive relationship ends, it will end with one of them dead. Their epic battle isn’t over. It’s just beginning.

But. After Lady Jane and the flats in Peckham he knows how damaged Sherlock is, how he expects people to use him, hurt him, abandon him. He sees it flickering at the back of Sherlock’s pale eyes, the presumption that people can’t understand, or won’t bother to try. He is, in a word, wounded.

Wounded.

John cares for the wounded. It’s what he does, who he is, his blood and bones. If ever anyone needed John Watson, it’s Sherlock Holmes.

John squares his shoulders, as if he’s going into battle. Because he is. He’s going into battle at Sherlock’s side. The familiarity settles over him like his Captain Watson persona, because whatever this is, whatever’s wrong with the both of them, keeps circling back for John, again and again and again. He’s not backing down; he’s not compromising. He’s committing. He’s in. All in. However it goes, wherever it ends — and it will end with Moriarty dead or in prison for life — he’s all in. For Sherlock.

From here forward, if Moriarty wants to get to Sherlock, he’s going to have to go _through_ John.

_Done._

“All right,” he says. Hands on his hips, he lifts his gaze to Sherlock’s. “All right. I’m in.”

Sherlock’s grey eyes blaze with a sudden intensity. He nods once.

 

 

*

 

They leave the club, get a cab home. As he exits the cab Sherlock tosses twenty quid at the driver, a pleasant change. John’s halfway up the stairs in his wake when clarity slices through his sex-satiated brain and he remembers what was in his front jeans pocket before Sherlock swapped it for the tube of slick.

The clip. The c _lip_. His adrenaline-junkie, light-fingered flatmate swapped the lubricant for _the Sig’s fucking clip_.

Three things happen near-simultaneously: he hears the click of the magazine shoved home in the Sig’s grip; a heady mixture of fear, irritation, and white-hot arousal surges from his adrenal glands into his bloodstream; and his cock decides he’s not nearly forty but eighteen by hardening in three rapids thumps of his pulse. John clears the last two steps in one bound and shoves through the flat’s half-open door to see Sherlock, feet spread and planted, sighting along his extended arm as he ostentatiously takes aim at the wall.

He’s alive, burning like a pyre, as he looks at John. _I always get what I want._

John finds he's still not surprised. He rolls his head on his neck to knock the tension from his shoulders. “You asked for it,” he growls.

Sherlock smiles. _Bloody smiles._

John catches the door on the rebound and slams it shut.


	4. Count The Flaws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John asked whatever god was listening for a distraction from Moriarty. Irene Adler is not what he had in mind.

“Mr. Archer, at the count of three, shoot Dr. Watson.”

_“What?”_

To Sherlock’s ear, trained in the violin and every nuance of said Dr. Watson’s voice, John sounds as astonished as a man should when, ten minutes earlier he was brawling with his flatmate in the street, and now is about to die.

For _her_. For the woman wearing his coat like a sixth former wears her boyfriend’s jumper.

Unacceptable.

“I don’t know the code,” Sherlock says to the American in charge. He lies frequently, but not this time, as should be patently obvious.

“One.”

“I _don’t_ … _know_ …the code.” With a minimal language barrier, surely repeating himself and articulating will ensure comprehension, even with this idiot.

“Two.”

“She didn’t tell me _I don’t know it_!” he shouts, using volume to cover what just might be panic.

The American is unimpressed. “I’m prepared to believe you any second now.”

Meaning when John’s pedestrian-but-necessary brain is spattered over Irene Adler’s cream rug. He looks at her, because he cannot look at John, on his knees, a gun to his nape.

The woman glances down.   

???????

The shift of her eyes is clearly significant but he has no idea why. He’s going to lose John watching him. Lose _John_ , who did not survive a bullet through the shoulder in Afghanistan to die here, in this way, now. Rather than in Sherlock’s keeping — as it should be —  John’s life is in this woman’s hands

( _handsarmsshoulderstorsolook_ )

Oh.

It’s all he can do not to roll his eyes, but the Americans do have guns. For the moment. Do their parents arm them at birth?

“Three.”

“No!”

He deduces her measurements, but something tells him that even naked Irene Adler is cloaked in layers of duplicity. After another significant glance, there’s a nicely choreographed bit of business whilst opening the safe. Irene demonstrates her self-defence skills, and while she’s pistol-whipping the last American, Sherlock palms her mobile. John trots off to check on the fallen girl, and the woman demands he return her phone.

He refuses, of course. He’s won it, perhaps not fair and square, but all’s fair, as the saying goes. This isn’t love, but it’s definitely war. Well, he says war, more of a skirmish — which he won — laced with an arousing physical element, a threat, and John’s life saved. Fire sings in his blood, heralding spectacular post-case sex.  

But Irene Adler plays dirty.

First, she rams a needle into his upper arm, managing to hit a nerve cluster in addition to injecting something into him.

Then her palm lashes against his face.

_That’s_ familiar, being hit with malice as a narcotic bubbles merrily in his bloodstream. The circumstances are not, a woman with hair done up like an Edwardian lady and the shock and awe tactics of a whore. It’s disconcerting, and the mental soup of confusion and drug-and-pain-induced flashback drops him to his knees.

“Give it to me.”

“No.”

She stays in his blurring field of vision, voicing commands from just out of his reach. Smart.  “Give it to me!”

Under the drug’s influence his muscles involuntarily relax but _she values the thing in his hand therefore he will keep it where is John_?  
He forces his body to obey orders, and tightens his grip. “No.”

“Oh, for goodness’s sake.” A whirl of the coat _his coat is that what it looks like when he moves oh that’s lovely_ then, “I — ”

Leather-wrapped fiberglass whistles through the air. Pain flares white-hot and fierce along his shoulder. At least it’s the one not throbbing from the impact of a needle full of what his body is assuring him is a very high-quality sedative.

“— said — ”

Oxygen molecules scream as they’re displaced at a rather high rate of speed, the crop’s motion powered by a woman who radiates fear and anxiety and arousal and an unholy glee. The impact triggers an echo of the shrieking air in his nerves.

He will not lose to this woman. Too much is at stake.  

The final blow lands.

“ — _drop it_.”

His fingers spasm open, and Sherlock drops the phone. But when the drugged stupor reaches up for him with fingers wrapped in thick gauze, he dreams not of Irene, but of John —    
  
 — John in the vest Moriarty detonates it John ceases to exist —  
  
— the rough-and-tumble with John outside the townhouse then John in the door with his gentle hands and his watching eyes —    
  
— John has a gun to the nape of his neck Irene doesn’t bat an eyelash Mr. Archer pulls the trigger —  
  
— John holds the crop, but he’s not speaking at all.  
  
  
When he regains consciousness in his own bed, his coat is hanging from the back of his door. For the first time in their singular relationship, he doesn’t feel like having sex with John after a case.  
  
She won. One doesn’t discuss losses, let alone celebrate them. John understands, of course, except he doesn’t.  
   
The next time he sees Lestrade, half the Yard clusters round while Lestrade plays back the video on his mobile of Sherlock as a great, drooling, incoherent mess. Laughter breaks out when Sherlock bangs his head on the cab’s doorframe while John struggles to get Sherlock’s long, uncooperative limbs into the vehicle. Without a word Sherlock takes the phone, deletes the video, and hands it back.

The room goes quiet. “Prat,” someone mutters, and it’s not Anderson or Donovan, or the egg-shaped crime scene tech.

“They were just taking the piss,” John says in the cab on the way home.

Sherlock says nothing.

“He wouldn’t do it if he didn’t like you,” John continues. “It’s just…something blokes do.”

Sherlock looks at him. John’s efforts to explain the nuances of human behavior are tedious at best and infuriating at worst. This is a worst. He lost, someone recorded the aftermath, and he’s the subject of ridicule.

“If he didn’t like you he’d have posted it to YouTube by now.”

Sherlock goes back to staring out the window.  
  
+  
  
Months later her phone appears in the post. The bloody post. All that fuss and the bloody woman entrusts the bloody thing to the bloody Royal Mail.

The home screen tells him I AM _ _ _ _ LOCKED. Helpful, that. So _thoughtful_. So _maddening_. He will unlock this phone, and he will win this round. But fiddling around with different combinations only ticks away chance after chance.  
  
John says he should let it go, could let it go, if he tried, but his strategy is all wrong. One does not back down from psychopaths, sociopaths, bullies, arrogant school mates, mothers, brothers who are the British government, or dominatrices. One does not ever back down. One wins by proving one is clever, more clever than the opponent. In winning lies freedom from manipulation, from obligation, from apology.  
  
Then the woman appears in his flat, pleading for protection, offering a puzzle to solve.

He solves it.

In…thanks?…acknowledgement?…perversity?…she attempts to seduce him. He knows this because her physiological responses mirror John’s. Elevated pulse, dilated pupils, shallow breathing…all proper signals of sexual interest, but it’s not quite right. Not like John.  
As she stares into his eyes in front of the fire, he identifies the difference. He’s not responding to her. He does to John. His response fuels John’s and John’s fuels his.

_John._

His name has become something more than a sound useful for getting his attention. It means something more than _come here I need you hold this open that lick there yes_.

The sex has been spectacular since that night at the club. John _all in_ is even more useful and fascinating and _watching_ than before. It’s an intense feedback loop of sex, competition, and victory. As this thing smoulders between them he knows he will never get enough of John Watson, because he will never get to the end of John Watson.  
  
+  
  
But then…then he’s driven to a plane full of corpses, where Mycroft explains how he’s been tricked, used, and manipulated by Moriarty, through the woman. He’s ruined one of Mycroft’s schemes, set back years of carefully gathered intelligence, and Irene Adler, smugly back in possession of her locked mobile, is now in a position to put rather a dent in the wealth of the British nation.  
  
Turns out, it’s war. Unless he can unlock her mobile, he will lose.  
  
I AM _ _ _ _ LOCKED.  
  
What would a woman who used her measurements to lock up her BlackBerry use to lock —  (l _ockaroomlockadoorlockboxlockandkeywhatisthekeytoherlock)_ —  
  
Oh. _Oh._  
  
It cannot be that simple, that ridiculous, that _sentimental_. First her measurements, then this? Not even John would wallow in sentiment to that extent.  
  
He plucks the mobile from her hand, enters the code. The lock screen dissolves. He hands the defenceless mobile to Mycroft, and gathers his coat.  
  
 _You are SHERLOCKED. I win._  
  
“Sorry about dinner,” he says without affect as he leaves.  
  
John would like that. He’s always telling him off for forgetting the niceties. Sherlock doesn’t mean it any more than he meant it when he asked Molly to forgive him. He tested various forms of affection until he found three most effective at assuaging John: stroking of hair or skin; kisses prior to separating and upon reuniting; Sherlock being kind to others. Affection by proxy. He doesn’t see the reward, but it works.  
  
+  
  
In the car back to Baker Street, he ponders the puzzle. Moriarty was behind it all, months and months of waiting, watching, testing different strategies and baits. Did he choose the woman, with her particular proclivities, on purpose, to test him for weaknesses? Would he have succumbed?

It’s an interesting problem.

He understands _her_ motivations. They make perfect sense, the need for total control, for total dominance. Her clients’ motivations defy rational explanation. Craving sensation makes sense to him; he is, after all, a drug addict. It’s the loss of control that doesn’t. People are generally mystifyingly stupid, but why would someone willingly surrender? What does she do for them they cannot do for themselves?

Why this woman?

It’s distracting.

It’s the cabbie’s pill all over again, and Moriarty, and John.  

He turns it over, tries to categorize it, take it apart and identify the components, and the sheer imprecision of the problem fogs his brain. Too many variables. He needs to be able to think again. He has to know. He needs clarity.

The next day, he texts John.  
  
Buy rope. SH  
  
What for?  
  
At least four meters. SH  
  
I'm at work.  
  
Tonight will do. SH  
  
Shops closed when I get off work.  
  
Scarves acceptable substitute. SH  
  
No easier to come by.  
  
Four. SH  
  
No.  
  
Any color. SH  
  
 0.o  
  
What is that? SH  
  
It’s an emoticon. Like :) or ;) or :P. 0.o = I’m raising one eyebrow to indicate “Really, Sherlock? Get scarves when I get off work? Are you fucking kidding me?” Your primary form of communication is texting. How do you not know this?  
  
Because it’s stupid and pointless, as is John’s attempt to convert his expressive face into symbols. He spends a few minutes attempting to construct an emoticon that resembles Edvard Munch’s _The Scream_ before deciding he has better things to do with his time.  
  
Silk. SH  
  
For God’s sake, why?  
  
I dislike polyester. SH  
  
He’s very tactile. John isn’t, or years of wearing uniforms dulled his skin. Sherlock’s is exquisitely sensitive, as John well knows.  
  
That isn’t the issue, Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock fails to see why there’s an issue at all. Perhaps money is the issue.  
  
You have my bank card. SH  
  
I’m ignoring you.  
  
John is patently not ignoring him. John is incapable of ignoring him. After a bit of research, Sherlock adds to the shopping list.  
  
Chemist: disinfectant, antibiotic cream, aloe. SH  
  
Christ. What have you done?  
  
Answer me, Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock. Answer your mobile.  
  
Bloody answer me somehow or I'm going to send Lestrade round.  
  
Delicate haemoglobin experiment. Stop bothering me. SH  
  
He thinks on it a bit longer. There's no need to be precious about all of this, so he sends one final text.  
  
Rope not scarves. SH

+

  
When John comes home, supplies in hand, he mutters darkly about running errands and his job mattering as much as Sherlock’s what with the need to pay the rent and keep himself in food. He haphazardly dumps the contents of two bags on the kitchen table. Sherlock sweeps everything up and tosses bottles and rope on his bed, next to his riding crop. When he returns to the sitting room, John’s shrugged out of his coat. John reaches for Sherlock’s arms and shoves the sleeves up to reveal his wrists.

“Christ, what’s that smell? Is it _in_ the fridge? What have you done with the shopping?” he demands, turning Sherlock’s hands palm up, then palm down.

“I’m not injured.”

John’s gaze lifts to his. “Thirty-eight texts today but you can’t be bothered to tell me you don’t need the shopping anymore.”

“I don’t need it now,” Sherlock says with exaggerated patience. He turns for his bedroom. “I will in a couple of hours. You’ve likely got a firm hand.”

John follows him. “What are you going to do this time?”

“A better question, John,” Sherlock says as he disinfects his crop, “is what are you going to do this time?”

John looks at the crop, the aloe gel, the rope, the antibiotic cream, then at Sherlock. His brain is normal but bright, so it doesn’t take him long to connect the dots. “How many blackmailing dominatrices do you expect to encounter, Sherlock?”

“Given the combination of sex, violence, and people’s obsession with the salacious, I’m rather surprised I haven’t encountered one before.”

“Point,” John says. He leans against the bedroom door frame, the pose too casual to be casual. “Did you want her to use that riding crop on you?”

John is jealous. It’s a petty emotion, unsuited to John’s face. Sherlock doesn’t want her. So artificial, so contrived, so theatrical. So needy. How could one think in her presence?   

“You are bisexual, John. I am not.” He’s not sure what term accurately describes his sexuality, but whatever it is does not include Irene Adler. “Furthermore, she did use that riding crop on me.”

He’s got John’s full attention now, and he is so restless, bored, and somehow dulled with it all. None of the distractions are working, and maybe what happened means he’s losing his edge _losinglosinglosing_ —

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I did not want her to practice her trade on me. I don’t want an elaborate scenario where I admit I’ve been wicked and beg to be punished,” he says impatiently. John can separate Sherlock’s infuriating habits from this. He won’t be beaten because he leaves heads in the fridge or humiliates Molly or can’t be bothered to clean up after himself.

“You just want me to whip you.”

Will this burn off the acidic fear, the pounding dread? Will it purify his mind of the memory of a gun to John’s nape while the American counts in a flat, nasal accent? Does it sharpen, hone, clarify? “Yes.”

“As an experiment.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure someone with your history should do this, Sherlock.”

“Don't be nervous. After the club I'm sure you'll be fine.”

John’s face goes even more still. “So no games. No fantasies. Just pain. Who decides when it ends?”

“You do.” It’s a penance, of sorts. John would never say it, but he must pay for who he is.

John’s face is a study in intensity. Eyes heavy-lidded, lips thin, a flush blooming on his cheeks. One eyebrow, one single eyebrow, flicks up. “Choose a safeword.”

Sherlock scoffs.

“Choose a safeword or this doesn’t happen.”

“I can take whatever you are able to give me, John.”

“Sherlock, are you familiar with the phrase _safe, sane, and consensual_? Of course not,” John says, answering his own question. “I’m talking to you. Two of those words aren’t in your vocabulary, and the third’s optional. Choose a safeword.” John nods at the crop. “Consider it your first order.”

John’s scruples are so boring, but the possibility of clarity means he’s prepared to acquiesce. “My safeword is safeword,” he allows.

John nods. There’s something to the precision with which he moves his head. He’s not agreeing. He’s recording a piece of data. “Bring me the aloe gel I bought,” he says, then turns and walks into the kitchen.

The gel is within reach on Sherlock’s bed, so John demanding it must be a component of the scenario. Sherlock brings the economy-sized bottle of aloe gel to John in the kitchen, where he is rinsing the tea cups. John doesn’t look up as Sherlock sets it on the counter.

“Wait for me in your room.”

Sherlock goes back into his bedroom, removes his knife from its sheath, and sections the rope into neat lengths while John checks the door is locked and shuts off the flat’s lights, the mundane, routine tasks he completes every night. Then Sherlock pulls the top sheet and duvet back from his bed, and tosses the riding crop and the rope on the sheet, keeping the knife close at hand in case John should need to cut the ropes quickly. He considers removing his clothes, but John will tell him do that. The thought makes him quiver.

John crosses the threshold and shuts the door behind him. “Hand me your belt,” he says without preamble.

Sherlock doesn’t move. John’s looking up at him yet somehow staring him down, and for a moment he remembers that John is _not_ small, _not_ wrong, and most certainly _not dull_. In fact, it’s quite fascinating that John remains in the same quiet jeans and shirt and jumper and yet become so completely different. Quicksilver flashes illuminate Sherlock’s nipples, make his cock throb with blood. “Why?”

John just looks at him. Silence stretches, heats, quivers with an unbearable sensitivity, much like Sherlock’s skin.

“The crop is on the bed.” Along with the rope. It’s cotton, not hemp. Clothesline. Hardly strong, but John will know how to tie knots.

It’s already too much. He needs this and fears it, how much John can be for him.

_Delete._

John says nothing. He stands in front of Sherlock with his hand extended, palm up, waiting. Ever so slowly his the lines and angles of his face set an ominous wash that makes Sherlock’s pulse kick hard. John doesn’t speak — when he’s like this he doesn’t need to — but somehow words hover in the air between them.

_Take off your belt and hand it to me._

He feels like a greyhound to John’s bulldog, looming over John yet somehow completely at his command. He unfastens his belt, withdraws it from the wool loops. The sound is nearly inaudible and unbearably erotic for its quiet menace.

John studies the room, Sherlock’s body, assessing, quiet. “Take off your shirt and lean over the bureau.”

Sherlock complies, using his elbows to shove aside debris on his bureau. He watches his face in the mirror as the first stroke, backhand, flicking, lands with very little impact at all. John collects the leather, lets it run through his palm, then does it again. Again.

The smacks barely register. “Really, John. I can take more.”

John ignores him. Sherlock waits while he experiments with angles and techniques; as John finds his way heat grows in Sherlock’s arse. Finally John sets his feet. The leather of Sherlock’s belt slips through his fingers, and this time he flicks the tongue of the belt at Sherlock’s arse with sharper vigor.

Breath halts in Sherlock’s throat, then scours out on a low closed-mouth moan.

Thwack.  
Thwack.  
Thwack.

He automatically counts the methodical strokes — _eleven…twelve…thirteen_ — but it requires more concentration than it should. He shifts, circles his hips in the air, lets his head drop between his shoulders. He can’t watch his own face anymore, so he watches John’s, the belt, anything but the dazed look on his face. Despite his swimming vision in the mirror he sees his belt whisk through the air a split second — _seventeen_ — before the impact sends fire up and down his nerves.

Thwack.  
Thwack.  
 _Thwack._

After twenty John steps close and cups Sherlock’s left buttock. He squeezes, massages, watches Sherlock hiss his breath through his teeth.

“Hmm.” Still standing close enough for Sherlock to feel the heat of his body radiating through clothes, he says, “Let’s have a look. Trousers and pants down.”

Sherlock’s body responds slowly, muscles clenching in pain as he straightens, unzips, unbuttons, lets fabric drop to his ankles. He’s erect, retracted and glistening, his cock pulsing with his heartbeat. John still wears his jeans and button down shirt.

John taps the bureau. “Over you go,” he says, then studies Sherlock’s heated arse, trails his fingers down the curve of each buttock in turn. Abused, alert nerves spangle in response, sending sparks to Sherlock’s cock. “Nice. We’re getting there.”

John’s hand slips between Sherlock’s buttocks to cup his balls. Sherlock tries to widen his stance but can’t, with his pants and trousers hobbling his ankles. He groans instead, and John laughs.

“We’re definitely getting there. Let’s go again. This time, count them for me,” he says, then waits.

“Yes, sir.”

John shakes his head. “I like the way you say my name,” he murmurs. “Use that.”

Using his name, not the more traditional _sir_ or the more formal _Captain Watson_ , only highlights the unbearable intimacy of the experience. John. _John_.

“Yes, John.”

The leather lands hot and sharp. In contrast, Sherlock’s voice is low and thick when he says, “One.”

Twenty-four additional blows land, and he internalizes the principles involved. Human skin is exquisitely sensitive, friction a scientific principle. John need not be hard, rough, or vicious, merely patient and steady, John Watson’s defining, dangerous characteristics. Swaying with the inevitable itching impact that blooms hot an instant later, Sherlock fights himself, his response to the pain, the undeniable pleasure. His cock is a swollen rod hanging into the air in front of the bureau.

John stops again, handles Sherlock’s arse with a clinical detachment that’s hot as hell under the circumstances. Sherlock can’t stop his moan, or the way he flinches away from John’s palm only to arch back into it the next moment.

“Right,” John says. “On the bed.”

He doesn’t help Sherlock free himself from his trousers, or make his way to the bed. Sherlock stretches out, spreads his hands and feet for the corners. It’s a relief to abandon the need to keep himself upright and in position. He knows it won’t be a relief for long.

John kneels beside him — _John on his knees on a gurney shouting orders his hands in a soldier’s chest_   — “I don’t like to tie you down,” he murmurs into his ear as he does exactly that, bindings swiftly and tightly knotted, as one would expect from John. “But I won’t take chances with those gorgeous fingers.”

Sherlock writhes. He doesn’t like being tied down, either, but he understands why it’s necessary. His control is slipping, the impulse to reach back and soothe sensitive skin is almost impossible to overcome, and John’s not yet used the crop. He doesn’t relish breaking a finger and losing the violin for any length of time.

“What’s your safeword?”

“Safeword,” Sherlock murmurs, but he’s just repeating what he’s heard.

“I expect you to use it if any part of this becomes intolerable. Not just your arse. Which will be plenty uncomfortable.” John pinches a welt, then says, “Are you in there? Repeat that back to me.”

Sherlock surfaces enough to answer. “I’m to safeword if the pain is too much, or if I cannot bear tied down any longer.”

“Good man,” John says.

Then _goodpatientdoctor_ disappears again. There is no warning before the first hit lands. John controls the crop with firm flicks of his wrist, as it’s meant to be controlled. Irene’s theatrics with the swinging strokes would, if not buffered by Sherlock's suit jacket and shirt, have bitten through skin into muscle. John’s twitches of the crop land brisk and firm, but very, very precisely. The strikes never land above the swell of his buttocks or below mid-thigh. John’s avoiding Sherlock’s spine, the small of his back, tendons and ligaments running through the backs of his knees.

His arse, however, transitions from warm to hot to stinging torment, a contrapuntal of pain at odds with and yet a feedback loop to the pleasure throbbing in his cock. John drops the crop across Sherlock's back, opens the top drawer of the nightstand, and kneels on the bed again. Sherlock’s too dazed, adrift on a sea of sensation, to think through what John’s doing, but it comes as no surprise when John’s lubed finger slides between his buttocks. The tip of his finger strokes Sherlock’s anus until he writhes restlessly. The feel of cool slick against his thrumming arse makes him moan.

When John’s finger slides inside, the sense of being breached, opened, makes him _groan_. A hand rests on his throbbing arse, thumb teasing the welts as two fingers turns to three. Sherlock’s unashamedly grinding against the bed before John withdraws his fingers and replaces them with a vibrator. It slides deeper than John’s fingers can, but he doesn’t turn it on.

“God, John,” Sherlock groans.

“Don’t come. Tell me if you get close.”

During the next series of flicking impacts from the crop pain and pleasure fight for control of Sherlock’s nerves. Then John reaches for the vibrator’s base and turns it on, and the pleasure wins. Sherlock can’t control himself anymore, rutting against the bed, seeking any contact that will crystallize the pleasure enough for him to come.

John chuckles. “Not yet,” he says, and works a pillow under Sherlock’s hips. It’s too soft, too giving for the friction Sherlock to get off, and the pleasure recedes back into the pain. The position better exposes the truly sensitive flesh where arse meets thigh. John’s strikes come more slowly now. Sherlock’s in a state of such raw awareness that John doesn’t have to hit him hard to keep him floating between agony and ecstasy. He’s desperate to come, writhing against the pillow, fucking it, but when the pleasure nears peak, John taps him with the crop and the pain takes over.

Language turns to white noise in Sherlock’s head. He’s speaking in groans and rumbles and fragments of sound, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying. It could be anything. _No. Yes. More. Stop. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t stop hurting me. Please._

John unties the ropes and shifts Sherlock on his back. Sherlock flops over, arms over his head, and sucks in air when his arse meets the mattress. He spreads his legs and writhes. John’s fingers trail down his temple, where his hair clings to his skin, over his lips, along his throat, arched and exposed, utterly vulnerable. When the movement stops Sherlock opens his eyes to find John straddling him. He lifts his fingers to his mouth and licks Sherlock’s sweat from the tips.

“You are…” He licks the end of his ring finger, then finishes with, “wrecked.” He reaches for Sherlock’s wrists and presses them into the mattress for emphasis. “Stay like that.”

Sherlock undulates against John’s grip for the sole pleasure of moving. His left hand drifts into his curls, and his right slides through John’s damp hair.

“Or like that,” John says.  

The rough, amused texture of his voice grounds Sherlock. _John._ So real. Even in Sherlock’s broken mind, John is there, calm and real. He presses a kiss into Sherlock’s wrist. Sherlock feels his tendons and ligaments quivering against John’s mouth. This is what John does to him. John takes him apart and holds him together. John could keep him in this in between state, strung between pleasure and pain, between need and release, between time and eternity, for forever.

Sherlock finds he wouldn’t mind, because… _John_.

The man who is the entirety of Sherlock’s world slides down his body and eases the vibrator out. His motivation becomes clear when he shoulders between Sherlock’s thighs. Sherlock’s fingers tighten in both his hair and John’s as John’s lips close around the tip of Sherlock’s cock. His fingers, more _thickroughhuman_ than the vibrator, drive into his anus. John mouths and sucks and licks as he twists his fingers; when Sherlock’s groans take on a crisis element he lets Sherlock’s cock slap wetly against his belly and shifts up to press his mouth to Sherlock’s. Back and forth he moves, mouth, cock, mouth, cock, the only constant his fingers working, twisting, stroking, and the throbbing pleasure/pain.  

He braces himself on one elbow and surveys Sherlock’s damp, flushed body. “I could leave you like this,” he says. “I could fuck you, come inside you, then leave you like this while I sleep. Think you could handle that, lying still, your prick aching, the smell of me seeping out of you?”

The image explodes in Sherlock’s heated, simmering brain. He groans. John’s mouth is so filthy when he’s crossed that invisible line that separates _goodpatientdoctor_ from the man with three fingers palm deep in Sherlock’s arse.

John watches him fuck the air. “I’d put the vibrator back in, tie your hands over your head. Just to make it interesting.”

It’s a relief to let go, to abandon everything. “No. I can’t…no. Please, John. Please.”

“Best not,” John says consideringly. “You’d rut against anything. The wall. The bed. Me. I don’t get enough sleep as it is.” He sets his mouth against Sherlock’s frenulum, breathing until Sherlock rocks his hips, undulating towards John like water seeking a place to gather itself, a container, a shallow place in the rocks, cupped palms.

“Please,” he whispers. “Please.”

John kneels between his thighs, then hooks his arms behind Sherlock’s knees to open him. The movement makes Sherlock cry out, but then John pushes inside. The stretch from hard, blood-hot flesh magnifies everything, pain, pleasure, the hot, sharp ache in his chest. John curls his hands around Sherlock’s thighs and fucks him slow, deep, relentless.

John doesn’t warn him when he decides to hurl Sherlock into the fire. He just doesn’t stop. He slicks his hand and loosely fists it around Sherlock’s cock, and lets the movements of his hips drive Sherlock's cock through his fist. Sherlock’s past awareness, one long groan scouring his throat. The sensation of John’s hips thudding against his abraded arse pushes heat into the base of his cock, then up, up, up until he simply cannot stop. Dimly he remembers he’s supposed to tell John when he gets close, but the change in the tenor of his gasps will have to do the job because he’s lost the capacity for language. Surely John knows. John’s watching him as intently as he ever has, and for a moment everything is fine.

Sherlock folds into blackness. He’s dimly aware when John gives a deep groan and shoves forward, his release pulsing deep inside Sherlock. Eventually John tugs free of Sherlock’s death grip in his hair, levers off the bed, curses as he stumbles into the bureau, then totters off into the kitchen. He returns with a basin and a cloth, which he sets on the nightstand. Firm, gentle fingers clasp Sherlock’s left wrist, then the right, turning to examine the skin. A soft hum of satisfaction, then a cloth sloshes in water. A cascade of droplets as it’s wrung out, then a cool damp flannel trails down Sherlock’s temple.

Sherlock tips his head into the touches. John pays special attention to his cheekbones, his throat, his lips. Desperately thirsty, Sherlock licks moisture from the cloth.

“I’ll get you something to drink in a minute.”

The touches ease lower, to his chest and abdomen, cleaning him. The flannel’s rinsed, wrung out again. Goosebumps rush over his skin, and Sherlock curls up on his side.

“Budge over,” John’s rough voice says. “And flatten out a bit.”

With a few gentle nudges from John, Sherlock rolls mostly to his stomach and lays his cheek on his folded arms. John stretches out next to him, reassuringly warm at Sherlock’s side as he wipes the cloth over his shoulders and back. The thorough, meditative motions ease him back into the earth’s atmosphere, but even the antibiotic cream on the rawest spots feels far away, like they’re happening to someone else. When John smooths a palmful of icy aloe gel over his scarlet bum, Sherlock crashes back into his body and makes a chest-deep noise.

“Sorry,” John says. “I put it in the freezer to chill it a bit.”

The cold glop coats his raw skin and some of the throbbing subsides. Some of it. What’s left of Sherlock's mind assures him he won’t sit easy for days.

John doesn’t say anything else. He leaves briefly to rinse out the bowl, and when he comes back, he offers Sherlock a glass of water. Sherlock manages to brace himself on one quivering arm to swallow the contents of the glass. Then he flops down again. John lies down on his side next to Sherlock. He still doesn’t say anything, just tucks Sherlock’s hair behind his ear, strokes his eyebrow, then his cheekbone, then his jaw. They’re soothing little touches, undemanding.

Affectionate.

Drifting on a heady wave of endorphins and oxytocin, he opens his eyes and stares into John’s.

_\-- Endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, _the biochemical cascade of their connection_. Pleasure. Pain. Clarity -- _  
  
_What do you want? I’ll do anything, tell you anything. I’ll tell you about the flats. The things you don’t know. I’ll tell you about school, what they did. How they toyed with me, again and again. I’ll tell you how Mycroft didn’t stop it, because I was weak. I knew what they were, and I got addicted. I’m yours. I thought you would be mine, but I’m yours._  
  
The thought snaps him back to full awareness. John’s gaze sharpens, but his touches never falter. His dark blue eyes are the last thing Sherlock sees before he drops into sleep.  
  
+  
  
The next day his cotton pants and wool trousers rasp against his abraded, swollen, throbbing skin. Standing is the only bearable position. Forward movement is no more than an awkward shuffle punctuated by clutching at backs of chairs, tables, doorframes. Sitting is out of the question. John watches him, highly amused but at half two takes matters into his own hands.

“You need a walk,” he says, and plucks Sherlock’s coat from the rack.

“I don’t want a walk.”

“You’re going to go for one anyway. Exercise will loosen up the muscles a bit.”

Sherlock scoffs.

“Shut up and put your coat on.”

He does. He winces at each stair, proceeds down the sidewalk at a hitching stagger, lurching from parking meter to light post. Hands clasped behind his back, John studies shop adverts and matches his pace and, for the most part, maintains his professional doctor’s face rather than rolling about on the pavement and laughing, which he clearly wants to do. Sherlock feels like a toddler being taken for an outing, but by the time they reach Regent’s Park he’s moving more easily.

“You’ve done that before.”

John tips his head in silent acknowledgement.

Sherlock is viscerally, horribly, irrationally jealous. It must sit better on his face than it did on John’s because John doesn’t seem to notice.

_Delete._

“Been on the receiving end?”

“Absolutely no interest,” John says. “It’s not really my thing.”

They pause at a bench near a picnic pavilion. John sits, stretches his arms along the back of the bench, and scans the park at Sherlock’s back. Sherlock does not sit; instead he stands to the right of John’s knees, hands clasped at his back, and stares at the opposite horizon. The threat is real, present, thrumming under everything they do.

“You were interested last night.” The whole night is colored by his own response, but the memory of John’s cock sliding into him, blood-hot and thick, of sweat dripping from John’s jaw to Sherlock’s lips, is clear and real.

“Because you fucking came apart at the seams.”

“You did that for me.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you won't do for me?”

“Yes,” John says without hesitating.

John has _killed_ for him. Sherlock’s grip on the finer nuances of morality is admittedly tenuous but what could _possibly_ be worse? “Name one.”

“I can’t,” John admits.

They walk home.  
   
  
Later that night, after John has gone to bed, Sherlock lies on the settee, a pillow under his arse, fingers tented under his nose. His mobile rests on his abdomen. It worked. His mind is crystal clear again, no longer remembering John on his knees, a gun to his nape. John is once again diverting and useful and a magnifying glass, sex and presence and _watching_ , focusing Sherlock on beating Moriarty.  
But first, there is something he must wrap up. It’s no wonder Irene Adler had so many secrets stored in her mobile. Compromising pictures of someone with HRH before her name were the tip of the iceberg. Her odd, mad combination of ruthless manipulativeness and emotional insecurity might be of value to someone he knows, someone with whom he wants to have in his debt again. He picks up his mobile.  
  
You might find her useful. SH

Continue. MH

Must I do all your work for you, Mycroft? Indebted to _you_ for her very life, she might be rather useful. To _you_. Not me. SH

He doesn't need her. He has John.

She did claim to know what people like. MH

Sherlock drops his mobile to his abdomen and resumes thinking. The next text arrives several hours later.

A car is waiting outside. Your flight leaves in two hours. MH

He texts John from the military base just before he boards a cargo plane.

Called away on business for Mycroft. SH

 

John’s texts are waiting when Sherlock lands in Karachi.

You’re not going without me. Where are you?

Rearranged my clinic schedule. Packing now. Tell me where you are.

I’m ready. Where are you?

For God’s sake, be careful. I’ll be here when you get back.

 

Of course he will.  
  
+  
  
In the hills outside Karachi, as is befitting a situation tainted by both Mycroft Holmes and Irene Adler, it's all quite ridiculously dramatic. She’s on her knees in the dirt. Surrounded by guns of every sort he’s handed a sword, of all things, and there’s a fair bit of shouting, and the whole scene’s lit by headlights from a jeep, and what on earth is the woman doing in a militant Islamic country in the first place? Her self-preservation instincts are better than this, and any assassin with a particle of sense wouldn’t bother with kidnapping and transport.  
  
He finds, as he hefts the sword, that he doesn’t care. She runs when he says run. Thank God. She’s capable of refusing out of sheer spite.  
  
Just before dawn a team of British commandos plucks them out of the hills like the hand of God. “Dinner?” she cooes when the helicopter lands in Mumbai.

He regards her for a moment. Like him, Irene Adler is very clever. Like him, she is a cracked mirror, damaged into brilliant beautiful shards. Like him, she is essentially alone in the world. But he cannot feel a moment’s remorse for his next words.

People who are brilliant, damaged, beautiful, and alone cannot afford to lose, and she lost.

“Mycroft will be in touch,” he says, and watches her illusions shatter.

He walks off the helicopter and across the tarmac to board his flight home, leaving her to negotiate with one of Mycroft’s least impressionable agents.  
  
+  
  
The plane’s quiet hum and dark interior feels like a cocoon, the perfect backdrop to think.  
  
It’s not the pain. It’s the byplay of dominance and submission. It’s an intense risk, intense vulnerability (to be avoided at all costs) and at the same time, it’s the ultimate in control, another shading, another facet of owning John. Because John will do whatever he wants.  
The plane has wifi. He sends a text.  
  
Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with us? SH  
  
All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock. MH  
  
He tents his fingers under his nose, thinking of Irene’s face when she shattered, John’s face as he brushed Sherlock’s hair back from his temple. They experience something that eludes him.

_Delete._

John, who is his, watching. No appointment needed.

_John._

He cannot be weak. Cannot be vulnerable.

_Delete._

There is no limit to what John will do for him. None at all. If he deletes all of John, how much of Sherlock will be left?

_Delete._

He closes his eyes. _Delete, delete, delete_. Clarity becomes white light, so brilliant it outshines everything but the worthy opponent for the world’s only consulting detective. Smart. Clever, really. Mad. Unpredictable. Still at large.  
  
He texts Mycroft.  
  
Proceed. SH  
  
He won, John is waiting, watching, and the game is on.


	5. As It Crumbles and Breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock tips off the roof of Barts, but John’s the one who dies.
> 
>  
> 
> Trigger warning for mentions of suicide, particularly the effects of suicide on the people left behind. If you want to skip to the next installment, here's a one sentence summary of 6K+ words: Sherlock falls, John thinks he’s dead, John grieves, Sherlock comes back. But you knew that already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Art by slapthosecheekbones [here](http://slapthosecheekbones.tumblr.com/post/57709191867/favourite-quote-from-trying-to-find-the). Thank you!

Even under normal circumstances Sherlock is uncannily lupine, resembling a pale-eyed white wolf fringed with black fur, yet recognizably human. But when John finishes caring for Sherlock after the whipping and Sherlock turns his head to look into John’s eyes, John suddenly sharing a bed with a wild thing off the Nature channel. For heart-pounding seconds, he stares into blue-gray eyes just inches from his own, and considers the possibility he’s just permanently damaged his lover. All of Sherlock’s natural defences, even the foundational ones formed in the hellish cauldron of the Holmes household and public school, tempered to steel in the flats in Peckham, are gone. Sherlock is literally out of his mind.

Then the wolf blinks and Sherlock is back. Bruised and raw and sore, but he’s back.

The trust. God, the trust.

John harbors a certain pride, walks with a certain swagger he recognizes from his Army days, until Sherlock leaves for parts unknown without him. He’s gone for three hellish, fear-singed days. John compulsively checks his mobile, stays awake waiting for him, but eventually exhaustion drop him. He wakes again to the madman made of moonlight in his bed. It’s John’s turn to be laid waste. When he comes, braced on elbows and knees with Sherlock inside him, Sherlock’s hand around his cock and his breath and teeth hot on the back of John’s neck, John has to bite back words he’d rather not say just yet.

“Where were you?” John asks. He has to clear his throat twice to get the question out into the vibrating air of his bedroom.

“Business for Mycroft,” Sherlock says. But he’s got that lazily satisfied look on his face, the one that means he’s won, won big, won spectacularly big. He’s crystal clear again, razor sharp. He’s knife eyes, as the Afghanis used to call people with light eyes. He’s a laser.  
  
+  
  
  
They take a case in Dartmoor. London is Sherlock’s natural habitat, and when he has to go and be elsewhere, he becomes irrationally…irrational. John cannot believe Sherlock claims to have seen the dog, the _hound_ , stalking him and Henry on the moor. Then, when he confesses he doesn’t have friends, he has _a_ friend, John nearly makes an emergency appointment with Henry’s psychiatrist. It’s almost sentimental.

John’s having breakfast before they catch the train back to London when he realizes Sherlock locked him in the lab to test his theory, to prove he’s clever.

“It was you. You locked me in that bloody lab.”

“It was an experiment.”

“An experiment! I was terrified, Sherlock. I was scared to death.”

At least this time Sherlock didn’t risk _his_ life. Just John’s heart, thudding away in the red zone as he scrambled from cage to counter in the pitch black, clinging to the sound of Sherlock’s voice over the phone, drenched in the sickly sour flop sweat. He recognized the smell from the war. Cut into a wounded soldier’s uniform and burnt meat, blood, and battle sweat drifted into the air.  
Sherlock doesn’t apologize. John considers being offended, or hurt, or angry. In the end, he lets it go.  
  
+  
  
In between the first and second scoop of beans onto toast for tea and telly John puts the puzzle pieces together. Sherlock hasn’t been the same since he got back from the bit of business he did for Mycroft, yes, but it began before that. Sherlock turned inward around the time they realized Moriarty was behind Irene Adler.

The crop makes more sense, now, but John doesn’t fool himself. There are great gaping holes in what he knows about that particular situation, and Mycroft’s involved, somehow. That rarely bodes well for Sherlock, and by association, for John.  

He tosses the spoon into the sink, shoves the plate to the back of the counter. “Fuck,” he mutters.

He’s in. That doesn’t mean for what he likes, as long as the situation meets his parameters, or doesn’t inconvenience him. It means until the end.

The sooner this — and by this, John means Moriarty — ends, the better.  
  
+  
  
John’s patience is nearly bottomless, but he’s relieved when Moriarty explodes onto the scene again, spectacular and theatrical. This time he’s the show stopper, the big finale, the third-act climax, a wee insane Irishman wrapped in a cloak and wearing the Queen’s crown. Caught in the act as he is, the case should be open-and-shut. But Sherlock’s his arrogant self at Moriarty’s trial, and John knows it’s going to be bad.

When the jury returns an acquittal, Sherlock withdraws from everything and everyone, including John. He sits in his chair, staring into space while John peers out the window.

“Do you think I’m a fraud?”

“No. No one could fake being such an annoying dick all the time.”

Sherlock goes quiet. John remembers how he feels about being called names, but he’s afraid. He’s afraid of what’s coming, and he can’t stop it. Sherlock could, but the situation doesn’t play to Sherlock’s strengths. Brilliance flashing like lightning from behind walls of superiority and disdain won’t work, and Sherlock shows no interest in learning new tactics.

It’s aggravating as hell. “What did I say? I said _don’t get clever_.”

“I can’t just turn it off and on like a tap.”

“Most people can, Sherlock. It’s called humility.”

Sherlock ignores him. He sits in the fading pearl-gray light and stares at God only knows what. John goes to bed, leaving him to brood.  
Hours later, he decides Sherlock needs something else.

“Come to bed,” he says into the dark sitting room.

Sherlock turns his head to look up at him.

John tips his head towards his room. “Come to bed with me, Sherlock.”

He moves slowly, as if he aches, but he crosses the sitting room and follows John up the stairs, his steps uncharacteristically slow, measured. John’s heart aches watching him. John gives him the only thing he can think of that is worth anything in all of this. He’s sat with men after they’ve lost girlfriends or wives to the strain of deployments, lost firefights, lost comrades in arms. He thought he might do when he settled back into civilian life, help soldiers transition through the tough times, until they’re steady on their feet. He was good at it in Afghanistan, and the NHS hires doctors specifically to work with veterans. But he met Sherlock, and he gave that up, willingly, to stand beside the man he loves.

There’s no way around or under or over that word. Love is something to lean into. If John’s really lucky he’ll _live into_ the love he feels for Sherlock Holmes, because he loves him. He loves Sherlock. John can’t give him insight or ideas or clues. He can’t give him a different personality, or wind back the clock for a second chance. He can only give Sherlock himself, his touch and his breath, his mouth and his arms around Sherlock as they move together, silent and simple for once.

Sherlock rolls John onto his back, then spreads his legs and slides deep. The slow, thorough possession takes John apart and he doesn’t try hold back the words. They come naturally, easing out on his exhales. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he whispers. Sherlock’s mouth hovers over his, Sherlock’s thumb strokes a bead of sweat from his temple as he murmurs the words again. Moonlight falls through John’s window onto Sherlock’s angular face; John watches Sherlock pulse beat in his strong throat and marvels at the sheer miracle of the human body, pulse and breath and brilliance, muscles and tendons and ligaments and bones all working together to create this spectacular, amazing, fantastic person John loves like he’s never loved anyone or anything before.

Pleasure stretches from one end of the night to the other. Sherlock pushes in again, his mouth working at John’s pulse, his hand on John’s cock. John’s heart races and his throat tightens as he arches and says it again — _IloveyouIloveyouGodIloveyou_ — until orgasm tears him apart.

Sherlock doesn’t respond in kind. He doesn’t comment on it at all. That’s fine. John can wait. Sherlock will say it when John least expects it.

Afterwards, John lies next to Sherlock and listens to him breathe. They need love. Sex isn’t enough. It isn’t. It’s brilliant and hot and incinerating and devastating, but it’s not enough. Sex won’t get them through this. Love will.

Eventually, Sherlock will realize that. He must. John’s not complaining, but they’re up against a wall. They can go no further like this.

Something has to happen. Something has to change.

Something has to happen.  
  
+  
  
John helps track down the ambassador’s missing children with one eye on Sherlock and the other on the shifting tide in the news coverage. The rescued little girl goes into a screaming fit when she sees Sherlock and Lestrade doesn’t dismiss it out of hand; John knows Moriarty’s scheme will be not just bad, but really bad. Everyone wants to protect children from a grave threat, and as long as there’s someone to target, the public isn’t too picky about whether it’s the right someone.

Sherlock’s an unsympathetic character at the best of times.  
  
+  
  
It’s worse than he thought. John hasn’t killed anyone for Sherlock since Jefferson Hope, but after his conversation with Mycroft, he’d willingly and cheerfully throttle Sherlock’s brother. He’s handed Moriarty everything he needs to discredit Sherlock, to destroy him. Despite the ominous consequences John’s unable to stop thinking of all of this as schoolyard games: he and Sherlock are now directly engaged with Moriarty for all the marbles. All of Sherlock’s marbles. Because despite John’s whispered confession, all Sherlock thinks he has is his reputation as a genius, a proper genius, a man who’s really clever, cleverer than everyone else.  
  
+  
  
Mrs. Hudson is shot. Leaving Sherlock in the lab at Barts, John leaves Sherlock’s side to hurry to hospital, only to learn it’s a ruse.

Oh, God. No.

He races back to Barts.

Then it gets as bad as it can possibly get. It gets like war. Impossible. Horrifying. The tips of Sherlock’s Yves St Laurent Eton leather lace-ups, black, size eleven, peek over the edge of the roof. The Belstaff settles around him like a bird settles its wings.  
  
John remembers only fragments of Sherlock’s last words, spoken in a voice so hushed and broken and humiliated John hardly recognizes it. “Watch me, John! Don’t take your eyes from me.”  
  
 _Never. I was built to watch you, to wait for you._  
  
“This phone call. It's my note. It's what people do, don't they? Leave a note.”  
  
 _No._  
  
“I did everything I could to impress you.”  
  
His phone buzzes, and he reflexively takes it from his ear. He keeps his eyes on Sherlock, but in his peripheral vision he sees the text fading from his call screen.  
  
I love you. SH  
  
“Oh, God,” he says. Or he thinks he says it. He doesn’t recognize the voice.  
  
 _You did impress me. I fell in love with you. I fell for you. Remember? I fell, Sherlock, I fell. I fell so you don’t have to._  
  
“Tell anyone who will listen that I created Moriarty.”  
  
 _You asked me what I wouldn’t do for you. I won’t lie to destroy your memory. I will not._  
  
Sherlock leans forward, over the void. The Belstaff billows, catching the air as he passes the tipping point.

John finds words, volume. “No. Don't. SHERLOCK. Sher —  “  
  
  
For one brief moment John believes with every cell in his body that Sherlock learnt to fly during all those rooftop chases. If anyone could turn a coat into wings and soar off the roof of Barts to land gracefully on the street below, it’s Sherlock. He’s just said he loves John. If Sherlock can love, then he can fly.

That’s what’s going to happen. Sherlock will fly. Moriarty will be fooled into thinking he’s dead. They will hide together, disappear, destroy his syndicate. All that needs to happen is for Sherlock to fly.  

.  
.  
.  
Sherlock flails. As if he’s trying to swim upwards, back onto the roof.  
.  
.  
.

The sound of a body hitting pavement from six stories up isn’t a crash. It’s a thud, a sodden thud, the sound of bones and muscle and brains, intellect and wit and insanity punched into a leaking sack of meat and gristle. John races into the street, is knocked to the ground by a bicyclist, then stumbles toward Sherlock, or what used to be Sherlock.

“Oh, God,” he garbles, his voice wet gravel at the back of his throat as he shoves through the shocked, clustered bystanders. “I’m a doctor. Let me through. He’s my friend. He’s my friend.”

He reaches for Sherlock’s wrist and takes his pulse. It’s useless. He knows that, can tell by the misshapen head, the blood seeping to the pavement. He’s too late.  
  
He’s failed.  
  
+  
  
Training and experience gets John through, for a little while. He’s a veteran and a surgeon who’s seen his share of trauma. John switches off and the battlefield surgeon switches on, until he stands outside Barts and watches as Moriarty’s body is loaded onto a gurney and trundled into an ambulance. Lestrade arrives, tells some story about assassins’ guns on him, John, Mrs. Hudson.

But John’s lived in a rifle’s scope for too long to give that any weight. Instead, he thinks about standing by an ambulance the first night he waited for Sherlock, desperately attracted, knowing that everything he missed about the war would be found here. Strategy, risk, adrenaline rush. A partner. A comrade. Maybe more.

But not death. It wasn’t supposed to end with Sherlock dead.

  
  
He’s fine.

  
  
But then, he goes to the morgue. Molly stands in the autopsy room. She startles when John pushes through the door. _I’m still ok_ , he thinks. _Just keep moving_.  

“Where is he?”

She steps into the middle of the room, as if she’s going to block John from the cold trays. Her hair is wildly askew, even for her, and she’s wearing some ridiculous sweater with bows. The thought that she could block John from anything at all is laughable. “You shouldn’t be here, John.”

“That’s never stopped us before,” he says.

The words echo in the whiteness, rebound off the walls, vibrate through the stainless steel instrument trays, then sink into John’s skin to his beating heart.

There is no _us_ anymore.

“Please."

There’s that voice again, the one from outside Barts he doesn’t recognize, the one that sounds like thickening cement. It’s his voice.

He will go to his knees if he has to. “Please,” he says again.

Molly opens one of the drawers to reveal a body covered by a sheet. John walks over to it, his leg twinging with every step.

“No,” Molly says, stopping his hand when he reaches to uncover Sherlock.

He can’t help it. He reaches again. Just one touch. Just one.

“No,” she says again, gentle but firm.

He nods jerkily. She retreats a few feet away, but it might as well be miles. There’s just John, and the body. Sherlock. _Sherlock._

John stands beside him, his hand twitching with the intermittent tremor as it rests first just beside Sherlock’s body, then slides back to grip the edge of the drawer. Body to drawer to body, back and forth, trembling, back and forth, until his leg threatens to give out. He pulls a chair over and sits down beside Sherlock. He sits there, waiting for whatever comes next, because that’s what he does. He sits with Sherlock, and waits.

 

What comes next is Mycroft, accompanied by Anthea, who, for once, isn’t texting. Refusing to accept insubordination from his leg, John stands to put his body between Sherlock’s and Mycroft.

“John,” Mycroft says.

_You did this_ , John thinks. _You did this. You gave Moriarty the ammunition he needed to drive your brother, your only brother, mad. You did this._

“He’ll be cremated,” Mycroft says, apropos of nothing.

John just stares at him. Sherlock has been dead for less than an hour, and Mycroft’s already thinking about the arrangements? John remembers Afghani customs, the lengthy mourning rituals that held communities together when lives weren’t worth anything. Babies died in infancy, women died in cooking fires and childbirth, men died from wounds and accidents; everyone died from totally preventable illnesses, and that was before the war began. What about three days of mourning? What about washing the body, laying it out, and wrapping it in a shroud? If it were up to John, he would do those things for Sherlock. He’s seen it done. It’s not difficult. All he needs are his hands, a basin of water and a stack of cloths. Sponge and wipe and dab. Exchange bloodied water and linen for clean until both remained a pristine white and Sherlock’s skin is immaculate. He would swathe Sherlock’s long limbs in a linen shroud, smooth his tangled hair back, tuck the folds just so around his battered face before he covered it.

He would do all of that, and more.

“It’s what he wanted,” Mycroft adds efficiently, as if that settles it.

John finds this very funny. As risky as their lives were together, they never talked about wills, or burial arrangements, or anything else normal people would talk about as they progressed through a relationship. They talked about how Angelo’s gnocchi is mealy, how long it takes human skin to desiccate in a desert, how many blankets to keep on the bed they shared (John: two, Sherlock: none. He ran to hot). He’s been inside Sherlock’s body in every way possible, but has no idea how Sherlock wants that body handled after death.

He rubs the back of his hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle.

Yes. Cremation is appropriate somehow. The thought of Sherlock’s body embalmed and slowly rotting in the ground is obscene. Sherlock would want to be burnt. He was burning alive.

John straightens his shoulders, shuffles his feet. “Will there be a memorial?”

“A small one. Private.” Mycroft makes his civil service face, the one that looks both pained and condescending. “Public sentiment is not favorable right now.”

John thinks about Sherlock’s views on both the public, and on sentiment. He laughs until he has to be sedated.  
  
+  
  
Propped on his cane, John peers in the urn before the memorial starts. There is a large wreath on one side of the urn, and irises from himself and Mrs. Hudson on the other. The room is largely empty: an uncomfortable-looking rector, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, draped in a raincoat, somehow both defiant and shell-shocked. Molly. Mycroft. Anthea. When John thinks of the people Sherlock helped, of the reunited families, the valuable objects restored to rightful owners, the people who were not blown to bits whilst wearing Semtex vests, he wants to rage the building down, stone by stone.

Instead he lifts the lid from the urn and looks inside. Definitely human ash. John knows human ash. He touches the tip of his finger to the surface, then licks it. It’s gritty. Like the floor of their flat against his cheek. Like Sherlock.

Lestrade approaches him. His eyes are shocked, and the grooves on either side of his mouth cut deep. “Come on, mate,” he says. “Come on, John.”

“You look tired,” John says, surprised. “Are you all right?”

“There’s a good lad,” Lestrade murmurs as he draws John away from the urn.

John allows himself to be led to a seat. Mycroft has permitted him to speak during the service. He clears his throat, adjusts his weight between his good leg, his bad leg, and the cane. “I was so alone and I owe you so much.”

He can say no more. Not with the taste of Sherlock on his tongue.

No one else speaks. The service concludes. Mycroft takes the urn to transport it back to the Holmes plot in a small cemetery in Sussex, and the howl overtakes John, rushing him like sandstorms in the desert.

The longest in between time begins. The time between Sherlock and death.  
  
+  
  
Life becomes a gray haze punctuated by a series of moments with John’s eyes pinned wide open by unspeakable anguish. Afghanistan gave him nightmares. Sherlock’s suicide turns the time he’s awake into one long sustained daymare. He can’t sleep. He can’t be awake, either. He sees mops of black hair atop tall, slender bodies and joy pierces him. He sees coats sweeping as their owners move and has to strangle a shout.  
  
+  
  
He’s back at Barts, staring up at the roof before making his way to the morgue, the last place he was able to be with Sherlock. There he can weep. He stays away as long as he can, until grief and loss threaten to throttle him, until his throat works with howls that can’t emerge anywhere else. Late at night he lets himself into the morgue, and grieves. He slips to his knees on the floor by Sherlock’s cold tray, and grieves. With his mobile in his hand as he looks at Sherlock’s last text to him, he grieves.  
Sobs.  
Keens.  
Howls.  
  
No one notices. It’s a morgue. People cry, scream, and howl there quite regularly. The living howl, and the dead don’t hear.  
  
+  
  
Mrs. Hudson lets someone into the flat.

“You’re good to come, dear. I don’t think he’s eaten. It’s very quiet up there. ”

A soft, reassuring voice. John’s lying under the blue robe, his head on Sherlock’s pillow. The scent of Sherlock, expensive soap, his skin, rosin, is beginning to fade, and John knows a new wave of grief will swamp him when he loses Sherlock’s smell in their bed.

Slow steps up the stairs then through the dusty, echoing flat, before Sarah Sawyer peers around the door to Sherlock’s bedroom and finds John in bed. John can’t find words. He used to know words, but he doesn’t anymore.

“Oh, love,” she says quietly. “Oh, love.”

She makes tea, then food, then hands him his toothbrush with a strip of toothpaste on it. He brushes his teeth while she adjusts the water temperature in the shower, then she leaves. Some time later she pulls back the curtain. John’s sitting in the corner of the tub, water streaming over his face and clothes, pooling in his shoes. In some distant part of his mind he knows something’s wrong with the way he went about taking a shower, but he doesn’t care.

“I failed,” he said. He has to tell someone. He has to confess. She’s a doctor, like a priest. She will understand. “I failed him.”

Her face fractures. Maybe he’s going about showering correctly, because she’s fully dressed, too, when she climbs into the shower, sits beside him, and holds him.  
  
Sarah’s kipping on the settee when he wakes up in the morning. She offers to let him stay at her flat, but he refuses. She comes and goes. Food, tea, clean clothes appear, go into or on John, then disappear. A couple of days pass, or perhaps couple of months. He finds he’s interested enough in where she goes when she leaves to leave with her. After that it gets easier. He watches her do things like go to the shops, bring back food, and prepare simple meals. He copies her. She talks, he responds, but he has no memory of the conversations. She takes him to the surgery, shows him around, introduces him to people. It’s nice, like going to a foreign country and meeting friendly people who smile and pat his arm gently. One Monday morning his phone reminds him to “Start Job at Sarah’s Surgery”.

He does.

The muscle memory is there, even if he isn’t. The motions of life can comprise a life, if executed within normal tolerances.  
  
+  
  
He meets Molly for dinner, walks her home while telling the story of Sherlock and the harpoon. Somehow he kisses her, and they end up on the couch. He’s so focused on not thinking about Sherlock that he doesn’t realize she’s resisting, saying _No, no, no_ until it’s almost too late.

“God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says, backing away from her, then off the couch entirely.

“It’s…John,” she says as she shoves her hair out of her face and struggles upright. Her blouse droops from her shoulder, and her skirt clings to the top of her thighs. “It’s…”

If she says it’s fine, he will lose his mind.

“I just…can’t.”

Tears thicken her voice. He should listen to her, let her share her memories, let her grieve. That’s who he used to be, the man who cared for others. Instead, he can’t straighten his clothes fast enough.  
  
He goes to a pub, drinks until he can’t stand upright, then after closing he fucks a stranger in the alley.  
   
+  
  
He meets Lestrade at a different pub for a pint. It’s awkward. He’s recovered enough to recognize how awkward, but he can’t pinpoint why. A couple of weeks later he gets an invitation to a surprise birthday party for Lestrade, which can’t be that much of a surprise because John senses Lestrade’s hand in the invitation. He buys a bottle of whiskey he knows Lestrade likes, and goes.

The house is full of people who recognize John from cases. The Chief Superintendent John punched, who smirks at John until Lestrade draws him away. Donovan says hello, then goes back to showing a friend the ring on her left hand. Anderson shoulders past him and beer sloshes over John’s wrist. Dimmock talks about rugby but John tunes him out.

No one brings up Sherlock. John looks at the string of texts on his phone to confirm Sherlock existed.  

Lestrade brings him another beer. “All right, then?”

“No,” John says.

Lestrade misunderstands. “I know. Sherlock’s not here. You’re not worrying about who he’s going to offend or deduce into punching him.”

He’s right. It’s dull. John watches the crowd a while longer, then says happy birthday to Lestrade, and leaves.

On the way tube ride home John realizes Moriarty’s plan was perfectly devised for the ultimate devastation. He convinced the world Sherlock Holmes was a fraud. He convinced Sherlock to kill himself. Then he left John Watson to deal with all of it.  
  
+  
  
He sees his therapist. It’s a waste of time.  
  
+  
  
Harry sets up a weekly lunch date, which must mean he’s really, really bad off, as they still don’t get on. He goes, because she will track him down if he doesn’t and it’s easier than dealing with her. She watches him eat little and drink much, then stops him from ordering his fourth pint. Perhaps fifth.

“Don’t, John,” she says. “Don’t. It won’t work.”

The fear in her eyes strikes a chord deep inside him. It occurs to him that he once looked at her that way, afraid for her health, her life.

“All right,” he says.

He stops drinking and doesn’t notice the difference. If he can’t tell if he’s drunk or sober, why bother?  
  
+  
  
He failed. He wasn’t enough to keep Sherlock here. He’ll never be enough. He was delusional to think he could be. People die. It’s what they do. They also stop caring, disappear into themselves, go mad, commit suicide.  
  
They live as ghosts.  
  
He goes to Sherlock’s grave in a remote cemetery in Sussex, and he says all the things he wishes he’d said when he had Sherlock in front of him. He would have sat him down in their odd sitting room and made him listen, _made him see_ what John could see, even if the rest of the world was blind. “Moriarty played with your worst fears, your skewed, fucked up vision of yourself, the one other people put inside you because they don’t see you like I see you. He pushed your buttons, making you dance to the tune of the only thing you can know for sure, that you’re more clever than everyone else. But that’s not the only thing you are. I love you. You are loved.”  
  
He says them, these words he should have said, and didn’t, with regret sloshing away in his stomach. Because instead he called Sherlock a dick. He called him a name, the man he loved more than life itself. A dick.    
  
Hand on Sherlock’s tombstone, he shuffles a little, trying to find words. “There's just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't be…dead. Would you do that just for me? Just stop it. Stop this.”  
  
He begs — of course he _begs_ — him to stop this. He begs him to have learnt to fly.  
  
+  
  
Sherlock doesn’t stop it.  
  
+  
  
Mrs. Hudson brings him tea and cake one afternoon, and flutters around the kitchen until he says, “I know. It’s all right. I know I have to leave.”

He hasn’t paid rent for three months. She’s on a pension, and 221C is uninhabitable. Sherlock might have come up with a chemical compound to kill the mould creeping along the walls and saturating the carpet, but first he was busy, then he was dead.

Her face crumples. She stood strong when the Americans tortured her for Irene Adler’s mobile, but this, this might break her. John pats her shoulder, and reassures her that he’ll be fine, that he’d planned to move out anyway.

“It’s fi — all right,” he says. “I’m thinking of moving out of the city. Fewer reminders. I’ll get a flat…somewhere.”

He finds an efficiency flat in Dagenham, nearly identical to the one he was living in when he met Sherlock. He’s come full circle.

“A fresh start,” Sarah says cheerily when she removes the last box from her boot and hands it to John.

A fresh hell, John thinks.

The next morning he wakes up next to Sarah. They start up again, off and on. She doesn’t make any demands. She’s gentle and kind and sane. He’s grateful. Or empty. It’s hard to tell the difference.  
  
He takes the train into Westminster every chance he gets. He sits at Speedy’s. Just in case.  
  
+  
  
People can’t fly. Not even Sherlock. But he dreams it, dreams what he wishes he’d seen that day, Sherlock’s great coat spreading like wings. It’s ominous, terrifying, Sherlock descending like death come to call, his hair alive and writhing like eels around his pale face, nothing in John’s ears but the sound of his own breath and Sherlock’s coat, beating like a terrifying angel’s wings as he drifts to the ground and stalks towards John.

He always wakes up before Sherlock reaches him.  
  
He thinks about Sherlock’s expression, his intent. Does he mean for John to follow him there, too?  
  
Does he?  
  
He can’t. There is a limit to the places he will follow Sherlock. He’s not much of a Catholic but he’s seen enough death to know the waste of it, the sheer horrible waste of it, whether it’s an eighteen-year-old boy barely bright enough to get into the Army who dies screaming for his mother, or Sherlock Holmes. Death is a waste.  
  
Why couldn’t he make Sherlock see that?  
  
Because he failed.  
  
+  
  
He talks to Sherlock like he’s still alive.

Sherlock had opinions about the oddest things, like the amount of condensation in a bag of baby spinach, and John realises he’s muttering to Sherlock as he picks through the bags. “I know, I know, that one’s too wet, it’ll rot and stink, I know.”

He starts laughing, standing in a Tesco’s horrid lighting, clutching a pitiful basket of shopping. Pasta. Sauce. Frozen waffles. Bananas. Tea and cream and sugar.

Other shoppers stare. One asks, “All right, mate?”

John sets the basket next to the prewashed baby carrots and leaves.

Sarah suggests he get a new phone. He talks to Sherlock and decides against it. This one’s just fine. It’s not sentiment. He’s being practical. Frugal. When he’s alone, he reads through the thousands and thousands of text messages Sherlock sent him. He goes to the grave. “I know what you’d say,” he says, “but I’m keeping the phone.”  
  
 _I love you. SH_  
  
+  
  
He sees Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, and Molly. He would also call that a waste of time, except there is no better or worse way to spend time anymore. It’s become meaningless to him, carries no value as currency. He takes every shift he can wherever he can until he drops, then calls in sick for days. When he wants to it rough and hard and anonymous he fucks random men in clubs.  
  
Eventually Sarah finds out. The look on her face is punishment enough. He doesn’t see her for quite a while, but missing her is a pang compared to the howling void Sherlock left behind.  
  
+  
  
Every second, every heartbeat, is just marking time until he dies. He’s never been a religious man. Watson, JH, Catholic is what his identity tags read in the Army, but that was just because he’d been raised and confirmed Catholic. He attends mass every so often, now, because the possibility of an afterlife, anathema as it is to his scientifically trained brain, is now in play.

Would he get in? He’s saved lives, but he’s also killed people in cold blood. It’s a bit tricky. He wants to ask a priest, but in the end he can’t do it.

_Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been decades since my last confession. I’ve killed. I’ve loved. I loved a man and I wasn’t enough to keep him from killing himself. I’ve lost.  
_

_I've failed._

_I am lost._  
  
+  
  
A woman named Mary lives next door to him. She has a bright smile and high cheekbones. She invites him over for tea or a drink, but he knows better now. After the second invitation he turns her down. It’s not fair to her.  
  
+  
  
Every so often a black car pulls up beside him. Mycroft and Anthea wait inside, then just Mycroft because Anthea’s either been promoted or made redundant, he can’t remember which. John gets in, listens to some tedious update on the progress against Moriarty’s organization.

“How do you know where I am?” he asks, interrupting some flow of information about Thailand, human trafficking, and a heroin connection in Pakistan. “Every time you just pull up beside me when I’m on the street. How do you know?”

Mycroft gives him a slightly pained smile. “Really, John.”

“The GPS in my phone? You can’t have someone following my every move on the CCTV cameras.”

Mycroft doesn’t answer.

“I can’t think why you care anymore.”

“Because you’ve never been approached by anyone…unusual?”

Not since Sherlock said _Afghanistan or Iraq?_ at Barts, but John doesn’t say that. He has been approached. Twice. The first time instinct took over; John had the man’s arm wrenched so far up behind his back he actually shrieked like a little girl before John shoved him face-first into the gutter. The second time came just days after the first anniversary. He’d spent the day at the grave, then the next day in a pub, then the next day in bed with a man who fucked him hard enough to leave him bruised inside and out, a man he couldn’t name or pick out of a lineup if someone had a gun to his head. When three armed men corner him outside a tube station, John just laughed in the leader’s face.

_Look at me_ , he said, arms spread, face ravaged. John can look in a mirror. He looks like Carthage after the sack. _Look at me. Do I look like Sherlock Holmes is alive?_  
  
+  
  
He collects pills. It’s not hard to do. He’s careful, because Sarah’s still watching, and because he doesn’t want her to blame herself if he goes through with it. He has time. It takes him months, but eventually he has enough sedatives for an accidental overdose. That’s what it would be. Accidental.

Dying wouldn’t hurt. He knows that. He would just go to sleep, and dream of Sherlock, and never stop dreaming of Sherlock. Sherlock would arrive in his spread-wide coat, and engulf John in darkness. He hides the pills with the gun. Every so often he takes them out, holds the bottle in his cupped palm, and listens to the soft slide of the capsules against plastic. He thinks about Harry, and Sarah, and Molly, and Mrs. Hudson. Lestrade.

Then he puts them away.  
  
+  
  
A second year passes, absolutely indistinguishable from the first.  
  
+  
  
One day, one ordinary, damp, gray day, a gleaming black car pulls up beside him as he makes his way from the tube stop to Speedy’s. It’s as good a place as any to sit and watch the rain fall, or so John tells himself. The car door opens. Mycroft emerges. “If you please, John,” he said in his oily fashion.

“Fuck off, Mycroft,” he says, and keeps walking, his weight on the cane.

“John, you really should get in the car.”

“I _really_ shouldn’t,” he calls over his shoulder.

“John. Please.”

“No. Not anymore.” His leg hurts. He’s tired enough that he might sleep tonight, no nightmares, no insomnia. He’ll sit at Speedy’s until they close, then go home, make dinner, and lie in bed until he falls asleep. It’s soothing, rain. Endless patter. Like Sherlock’s voice when he was on about something.

His mobile, now held together with duct tape and a rubber band, buzzes. Just to prove to Mycroft that he’s ignoring him, John pulls it from his pocket and looks at it.  
  
Don’t be tiresome, John. SH  
  
John’s heart stops. For a second there is a lack of movement in his chest he distantly finds professionally worrisome. He stands on the pavement, staring at the text. It’s from a blocked number.

This is not possible.  
  
His heart kicks hard against his breastbone. The accompanying surge in his blood pressure creates a buzzing in his ears. He whirls, peers at the windshield of Mycroft’s large car but can see little of the driver’s face and nothing of the back seat.

This is not possible.  
  
 _How many times must I tell you? When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._  
  
The car slides forward the few meters John’s progressed down the sidewalk, Mycroft strolling beside it, twirling his umbrella. His face shows nothing. No delight, no amusement, no pained smirk. Nothing. John looks from him to the tinted windows and back again.  
  
The car stops beside John. The door opens. Well aware that putting his head lower than his heart might actually save him from passing out on the pavement, John ducks and looks into the dark interior.  
  
Sherlock’s sitting in the far corner, mobile in hand. He’s oddly tanned, and dressed in trousers, a collared shirt, a dark gray sweater. His hair is shorter, his gray eyes alight with brilliance and triumph and an arrogance so familiar John almost forgets the last two years.  
“Hello, John.”

.  
.  
.  
John shakes his head. Blinks.    
.  
.  
.

He gets in the car.  
  
“You. You’re. You’re alive.”

Sherlock’s gaze flicks over John, gathering data, details, secrets. One black wing of a brow lifts. “Ye-es,” he says in the tone he uses to respond when someone’s rather painfully stated the obvious. “It’s been a brilliant adventure, John. Brilliant.”

Tight smile back in place, Mycroft slides into the seat opposite John, and reaches for the handle to close the door.

John shoves past his arm and catches the window frame with his shoulder as he lunges for _anywhere not in the car_. The door’s recoil sends him staggering against the rear fender, but he stumbles to the curb and onto the pavement.

Then he runs.


	6. Sorrow Unmasked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock’s won. The victorious homecoming doesn’t go quite as he planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran:
> 
> Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.  
> And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.  
> And how else can it be?  
> The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.  
> Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?  
> And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?  
> When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.  
> When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
> 
> Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."  
> But I say unto you, they are inseparable.  
> Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
> 
> Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.  
> Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.  
> When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Brilliant?

It’s been _brilliant_?

What Sherlock’s done…it’s _not_ brilliant.  
  
+  
  
John shoulders through the door to the morgue at Barts. He hasn’t seen Molly in ages, not since he walked her home so out of his head with grief he could have _he’s not dead get away_ raped her. She looks up from the floatation bath, but her greeting dies on her lips when she sees John’s face.

Not trusting himself to get any closer, he stops just inside the door. His internal organs seem to lurch at the abrupt halt, jerking against his ribs and hips like he jerked against the shoulder harness during car chases. Movement provided a release, running from the car _get away_ , hailing a cab, the vehicle’s speed, the braking and shuddering all mirrored what he felt inside. Now he has to stand still. He’s vibrating with the effort, muscles trembling, throat working. He falls back on his military stance, squares his shoulders, straightens his spine.

“Did you know? DID YOU FUCKING KNOW?”

Her eyes widen, then recognition cascades from her eyes through her mouth to her shoulders. John needs no other confirmation.

“You knew — you _helped_. You gave him the body. And then you listened to me cry, watched me mourn, and didn’t say a word. We nearly —. I nearly — . You — . You are — .”

He wants to call her names, but she’s backing away from John, slowly, carefully, putting the counter between them. Eyes wide. Hands spread.

John looks at the cold trays. “Was that even his body? No. Couldn’t be…”

He remembers sitting there, shocked back into the tremor and psychosomatic limp. Sitting there, with “Sherlock”. Like an _idiot_.

Where was he at that point? At Mycroft’s? Out of the country? In the corridor, listening?

_Watching?_

“John — .”

He just looks at her, and she shuts her mouth. Her eyes are enormous, a reptilian brain fear-based reaction. No one’s looked at him like that since he carried a rifle. He must look murderous. It’s appropriate. He feels murderous. But in some part of his brain he knows Molly isn’t the one he wants to murder. No. He just wants to hurt her.

He doesn’t need to lay a finger on her to do it. There are a dozen things he can say. _I had him and loved him and you were jealous. Did you think of us fucking when you were in your sad little flat by yourself? We never, ever thought about you. Whatever you imagined, whatever pleasures you tortured yourself with, we were darker and hotter and slicker and deeper than you can comprehend. The ground vibrates when he moans. Did you know that was possible? He trusted you to keep his secret because you weren’t important enough to be threatened by Moriarty. No one thought you were important, not Moriarty, who used you, not Sherlock, who also used you._

But he can see Molly’s lived with that particular bit of knowledge for years.

As of twenty minutes ago, the category also defines him. John Watson and Molly Hooper, so willing to be used.

“He’s back,” he says unnecessarily. “But you knew that already.”

“I didn’t! John, I’m sorry. _John_ — “

He leaves, trotting down the hallway, scanning open doors and classrooms and supply closets, looking for Sherlock, but not out of habit.

Not because he just never knew where the bloody man was.

Now he can't bear to see Sherlock. He thought his wreckage of a life couldn’t get worse. He was wrong.  
  
+  
  
Greg Lestrade lives in a semi-detached house in a comfortable neighborhood. The big oaks in the front yard are damp with rain and shedding their leaves, transforming the front walk into a colourful, slick surface. John hasn’t been to the house since the surprise party. He bangs on the door and gets in rapid succession a surprised teen, then Greg’s wife, then Greg himself.

“Did you know?”

“Did I know what?” Greg asks as he braces the door open with his hand. His wife vanishes inside. “Jesus, John. What’s the matter?”

Greg’s a policeman. He can hide his emotions, so John drops the bomb. “Sherlock’s alive. Did you fucking know, Greg?”

Greg’s dark eyes crease with worry. “John, Sherlock’s dead. You saw him fall.”

He thinks John’s finally lost it, finally gone round the bend into insanity. John shakes his head as he shifts his weight, muscles twitching from the need to move _I love you SH get away_. “He’s alive. Sherlock’s alive. He faked his suicide.”

A car turns the corner at the end of the street. John and Greg turn to look at it. They’ve both spent enough time in the back of Mycroft’s vehicles to recognize the particular aura of black and sleek and funded-by-taxpayers.

Greg’s gaze meets John’s, the shock genuine, his jaw literally dropping open.

“I’m not mad,” John says, not sure if it’s a lie or the truth. “He’s alive.”

God only knows what Greg sees in John’s face, but he steps ever so slightly back and to the side. John bolts through the house and out the kitchen door into the garden. He hops the fence, sprints past two yipping dachshunds and an astonished child on creaky swings, opens the gate to the driveway, and trots down the street until he finds an alley leading to the next street over. Back on the main road he hails yet another cab.

“Where to?”

He can’t think. He can’t think in London, where every air molecule is charged with Sherlock’s presence. He has to get away _get away I got what I wanted I got Sherlock not being dead Sherlock stopped it I love you SH but this is not what I wanted brilliant get away_.

“Paddington Station.”  
   
+  
  
At Paddington he gets a ticket on the first train leaving, to Cardiff, just his luck. Fucking rainy Wales, which reminds him of the pink lady’s case. When he arrives he pays cash again for a ticket on the first bus leaving for a village he can’t pronounce, and rides to the end of the line. The bus driver directs him to an inn. He walks through the rain and rents a room in a tiny bed and breakfast on the edge of fields bounded by low stone walls and dotted with sheep. The only room the innkeeper has left is a suite with a private garden. He takes it, walks into the room, shuts the door, closes the blinds to the rain-drenched patio. Then he looks around. The space is reassuringly modern, a low IKEA bed covered in a dark green spread, a matching leather chair by a small fireplace, a stark white en suite bath with dark green towels.

Nothing in the room reminds him of Sherlock. The colors, the scents, the furniture, the scenery, nothing. He shrugs out of his jacket and sits in the chair, then hunches forward and grips his head. He can think here, somewhere untainted by Sherlock.

_Don’t think. Don’t think about what this means, for you, for him, for what you thought was us. Don’t think. No good will come of it._

Sherlock finds him, of course. His acquaintance with boundaries is a passing one, formed as he blows past them. John’s barely got his heart rate and breathing under control before a rap comes on his door.

“Did you order a posh Englishman?” the innkeeper asks cheerily as she opens the door.

Sherlock appears behind her. He’s wearing the same sweater and trousers, plus the Belstaff. Rain dots his hair, and his eyes are intrigued, assessing, gathering data. John finds he can’t bear to hear what Sherlock deduces about his sprint across the island. He’s on his feet, backing away slowly, almost immeasurably putting distance between himself and Sherlock. He makes himself stop, stand his ground, square up, and decidedly does not think about how six hours ago he was praying for one more chance to curl up with his head tucked under Sherlock’s chin so he could hear his heart beat.

“John,” he says.

“Don’t — ” John starts. He stops. Swallows. _Don’t say my name in that voice._

The innkeeper’s smile wavers.

Not here, not in this lovely home full of unsuspecting, innocent bystanders. This promises to get quite ugly quite quickly. “Outside.”

Sherlock’s on the verge of rolling his eyes. Funny how John still knows every quirk of every expression on his face.

“ _Outside_ ,” John repeats.

Sherlock’s gaze flicks to the window. “It’s raining.”

“Why do you care? You’re dead.”

It sounds enough like a threat that the innkeeper’s wavering smile disappears entirely. John yanks his jacket from the back of the chair, and shrugs into it as he walks out the French doors to his private garden, along the crushed stone drive, into the fields.

Sherlock follows him.

They stumble through sheeting rain, dodging the sheep and the rocks, skirting hillocks until the bed and breakfast is a low shape at the base of the hill. The temperature’s dropping. That explains the shakes and shivers and his raw throat. John turns to face Sherlock, his position a meter up the hill putting their faces level.

John won’t ask him where he’s been, but Sherlock never needed a conversational prompt. “Moriarty’s been eradicated from the face of the earth. I tracked them all down. The entire syndicate. Terror cells, arms trafficking, drug trafficking to fund terrorism, all of it. I won, John. I won.”

In all of this, a victory is what he thinks matters? John could not possibly care less. “Mycroft knew.”

“Yes.”

“And what was I?”

“Confirmation of my death.”

Sherlock speaks the words without a hint of emotion. “So it’s Baskerville all over again, years of Baskerville. You used me and my emotions to prove a theory, to win.”

“Your reactions were perfect, John. Perfect.”

“Because they were _real_ ,” John shouts. “I wasn’t acting. I lived your death. I mourned you. It was all real, Sherlock.”

Sherlock pauses. He’s looking at John like he’s trying to figure out what’s happening, like a clue doesn’t fit into his favorite theory. John realises that it doesn’t, because Sherlock never did understand emotions. Everything John said and did was not only not understood but also dismissed. He’d thrown affection, loyalty, devotion, love into a void.

His life with Sherlock was a lie.

“Of course it was real. You love me,” Sherlock says in the baritone rumble that used to send a shiver down John’s spine. Not anymore.

John’s throat closes with rage or horror or fury or shame. He can’t tell which. He thought he was pretty good with emotions, but identifying the component parts of the sick acidic stew roiling inside him is beyond him.

“And I destroyed the threat to you.”

John regains his voice. “That’s like a man saying he’s spent two years fucking his mistress because he loves his wife.”

“That simile is inconsistent and also dull.”

“Did you think…? No. You did. You thought I’d be here when you got back, waiting like an exceptionally well-trained dog.”

“You said all right. You said you were in, all in.”

“Not for this. Not for this.” He would have been, if it had been anything but this. But they’ve reached John’s capacity for forgiveness. He is out of patience. He is out of everything. Some small part of John howls with regret at what he’s about to do, but if there’s going to continue to be a John H. Watson who’s got anything resembling a set of morals and ethics, not to mention a fucking spine, there’s no going back now.

This ends now.

John holds out his phone, his three year old crap phone held together with tape. The series of texts with Sherlock is on the screen, scrolled through thousands to the very last text.

I love you. SH

His lips parted, Sherlock’s gaze flickers away. Rain has soaked his shirt, plastering it to his tanned skin. John can see sharply defined muscles in his chest and abdomen. He’s at the peak of good health, Sherlock is. John’s winded from the walk up the hill.

“Did you mean it? Or was it a ploy, to ensure you’d get the response you needed to convince people you were dead?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer. Somewhere deep inside, because John’s a rational man in most circumstances, he knows there are two possible reasons. The first is that Sherlock didn’t mean it but has the mother wit to not say that.

The second is that Sherlock simply doesn’t know. The idea that he might feel love had crossed his mind, but the fact that he’d use it like this screams sociopath.

“Do you know why I still have this phone?” John asks, very matter-of-factly. “I still have it because if I got a new one I’d lose this text. Three words, two initials, ten letters. I could screen cap it and email it to myself, but I kept it, and the series of messages. _Buy rope. Bring back miso soup. Where have you hidden my patches? Air no longer toxic. Mrs. Hudson not pleased at state of our kitchen._ Know why I kept it? Because when I held my phone in my hand and read your texts, I felt like you were still here. I kept it because _you prefer to text_!”

Sherlock’s hair is plastered to his forehead and temples. His eyes are the color of the rain pounding into them. “He was going to kill you, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade.”

John shakes his head in disbelief. “You weren’t clever enough to anticipate that he’d threaten people in your life? He’d done it before! Or were we just chess pieces to you, tools to use to win?”

“I did what I felt was best.”

John laughs. It sounds disturbingly similar to the sound he made when Mycroft brought up public sentiment. “What you _felt_ was best? _You_ , who can’t feel anything, felt it was best to say I love you then leave me here to live with the image of your head smashed like a gourd on the pavement? It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a pulped human head. I’ve picked teeth out of brain material to identify boys blown, literally, into bits by an IED. You _fucking selfish machine_.”

_He’s a veteran with PTSD and trust issues…_

“I took apart the rest of Moriarty’s organization.”

_…and Sherlock’s a sociopath who risks his life to prove he’s clever._

“There’s always another war, Sherlock. There’s always another Moriarty. I hope it was worth it.”

Sherlock says nothing. Rain sheets over the coat. His trousers lie sodden against his legs, revealing the shape of his thighs and knees. His final act of pissing on Moriarty’s grave is to return to London and reclaim his life: his flat, his unorthodox relationship with the Yard, John.

“It’s not just me,” John adds. “Everyone suffered so you could be clever. Molly. Lestrade. God, what Lestrade went through. Mrs. Hudson. Sarah, and Harry, and everyone else who spent the last two years making sure I didn’t wander in front of a bus. We are people, Sherlock, human beings with feelings. Death means something to us. You played with death like it was a chess move. You got to be dead, and the rest of us had to go on.”

“I wasn’t dead, John. I’m not dead.”

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t comprehend what it means to love, to lose, to grieve.

John swipes at the screen, cursing its slow response. He brings up the edit function, taps the red circle next to Sherlock’s name, then taps it again. “Deleted,” he says, pointing at Sherlock with the hand holding the phone. “My God, that was easy.”

He drops the phone into the sodden hillocks at his feet.

“John — ”

“Don’t.” He hasn’t used that word in that tone since his first encounter with Mycroft.

“ — you’re not in a meaningful relationship, and you haven’t been since I left. You live alone and have few friends, no one who would notice, much less care if you disappeared for a weekend. You still don’t get on with Harry  or you wouldn’t have run away to Wales when you saw me. You’d have gone to her. You lack outside interests. Your job bores you. It can’t pay well, because you’re wearing clothes that were out of fashion two years ago, and using an old phone, or perhaps that’s sentiment. I’m not dead. However you may feel right now, picking up where we left off is the only logical thing to do.”

And there’s another boundary, blown past.

John stares at him. “Hey, Sherlock?” He waits until Sherlock’s looking at him, stretches the moment until something flickers in Sherlock’s eyes. “Piss off.”  
  
+  
  
When he gets back to the bed and breakfast, John lets himself in through the French doors to his room. He showers until he’s warm again, gives his hostess an extra tenner to dry his clothes, and wraps himself in the blanket from the bed. He sinks to the floor with his back to the wall beside the patio door.

When he fantasized that Sherlock could fly, he’d imagined he’d feel grateful when Sherlock reappeared. He would feel thrilled beyond measure that Sherlock’s alive, because Sherlock is brilliant and amazing and one-of-a-kind. Instead an emotion, dark and dense, swells in his chest. He can’t even name it. Fury isn’t strong enough. Shame won’t stretch to fit around it. Betrayal. He feels betrayed. There is a difference between being useful, and being used. When that lines gets crossed, betrayal seeps up like oil from the ocean floor, rising in poisonous bubbles to pool in his lungs, clog his heart.

He stopped blogging ages ago. Nothing cured his interest in social media like perfect strangers stopping him on the street to comment on his life like they knew anything at all about him. Instead he writes his few thoughts in a pocket-sized Moleskine he carries with him.

At the top of a fresh page he writes in block printing:

SHERLOCK IS ALIVE.  
HOW I FEEL:  
  
USED  
HUMILIATED  
BETRAYED  
LIKE AN IDIOT  
  
He writes nothing else, because he is an idiot. He believed a lie — that Sherlock was dead — because it was preferable to the truth: that Sherlock left him to claim the ultimate victory over Moriarty.  
  
The rain pattering against the glass reminds him of the hillside, and what he’s lost all over again. All the ways he’s compromised, and has been compromised.  
  
+  
  
It’s as if the world is coming to an end as John strides back to the inn.

Sherlock’s soaked to his skin. Even his coat can’t withstand a Welsh downpour. His jacket, trousers, shirt, thin socks, and shoes are all completely drenched. His hair hangs in his eyes. The sun’s setting, leaving a low bank of gunmetal gray clouds bearing down overhead. God’s own deluge. The world ends in floods and torrential rain, not fire.

John was supposed to understand. He would listen, nod, say he’s all in.

The rain pooled in his collar streams into the grass when Sherlock bends over to pluck John’s mobile from the ground. He studies it, the screen unresponsive from scratches, age, a slow network and the rain.

_Hey, Sherlock? Piss off._

He follows John, skirts the bed and breakfast’s parking lot. Even before the innkeeper led him to the room, deduced John’s suite from the other guests’ comings and goings, the pattern of lights, John’s late arrival. He’s got the most expensive room in the inn, the one on the first floor with the view of the sheep-dotted valley and a private terrace with beleaguered potted plants. It’s a luxury John never would have allowed himself under normal circumstances, and probably can’t afford.

Sherlock hunkers down with his back to the wall by the French doors. Rain streams down the creases of his thighs and into his shoes. It’s quiet inside John’s room, but the silence vibrates the way it did just before John transformed from _goodpatientdoctor_ into something potent, powerful, sexual, deadly.

John cannot shut him out. It’s impossible. Except…on the hill…John looked familiar. Like Sherlock stood in front of a mirror, watching himself.

Something sloshes inside his chest, the noise the tide makes as it laps at the shore.

He surges to his feet, walks around to the front door and goes inside. The innkeeper exclaims when she sees him. Rain sluices in his wake, pools at his feet and streams from his sleeve when he extends his hand to her.

“Would you give this to Dr. Watson? He left it on the hill.”

She takes the mobile. “Yes. Of course. Is…everything all right?”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says expressionlessly.

It’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be fine? John said it was all fine.

The connective tissue around his ribs creaked and popped. That’s what he thinks the noise inside him is.

“Sorry about the floor,” he says as he leaves, because that’s what people say. He doesn’t mean it.  
  
+  
  
John goes to bed.

Rather than abating thanks to Sherlock’s miraculous return from the dead, his nightmares continue. Tonight they are especially vicious, a montage of Afghanistan and the pavement beside Barts. Over and over he dreams of Sherlock crouched on the sidewalk, dressed in camouflage, cradling a rifle while he wrenches his smashed head up from the limp body in the tweed coat. He laughs at John. Mocks him for being an idiot, for loving him.

John jolts awake time and again. Eventually he gives up on sleeping and stares out the window until the sky lightens. After a breakfast he forces into his stomach, he checks out in time to catch the bus to Cardiff.

“You’ll catch your death, traipsing around in the rain like that,” the innkeeper fusses.  

John’s not worried. He can’t get any more sick than he already is. It’s physically impossible. Cancer or a tumor or a debilitating wasting disease that slowly paralysed his nervous system could not possibly wreck him any further.

The innkeeper reaches into a cubby in the desk. “Your friend left this for you.”

It’s his mobile. Sherlock retrieved it from the field and turned it on. The battery’s almost dead, and new texts are indicated on the Messages icon.

“He’s not my friend,” he says, and powers it off.

Sherlock wasn’t his friend. He was Sherlock’s friend, his only friend. But Sherlock wasn’t his. Remember that.

On the train back to London, he watches the green countryside roll by and thinks about the human mind. The memory of a thing, relived again and again, can hold as much or more power than the event itself. Memory becomes a living entity, capable of provoking emotions. But memory is in the mind, and John’s not going to be at the whims of his mind any longer. Somewhere in this wreckage is the man John used to be. That man had a skill handy for doctors and soldiers: when properly motivated, he can compartmentalize. He doesn’t have a mind palace, but he’s got a box. It looks like the polished oak specimen box with dividers he used to sort his rock collection when he was a kid. He takes out his memories of Sherlock, one by one, examines each carefully, then puts it into a compartment.

The fire warm at his feet, the chair solid at his back, the sensation of Sherlock’s thumb in the hollow of his throat.

Sherlock bending to nuzzle into his hair.

Sherlock plastered to the couch at the club. Sherlock ablaze in their flat, John’s gun in his hand.

Sherlock’s wild, untamed eyes after the whipping, _John_ resonating in the air like a prayer.

I love you. SH

The last one, the hillside in the rain. _Piss off._

He watched his reflection wince in the train’s window. He’s hurt Sherlock. He did the thing he said he would never, ever do.  
That’s what they’ve come to. That’s what he’s come to. The final compromise. Sherlock leaves nothing but the bones.  
  
John slides the lid into the grooves and tucks the box at the back of his brain. His reflection in the window looks no different. It will take time, but the one thing he’s got is time.  
  
At Paddington, he removes his phone’s sim card and battery, then drops the housing in a bin. He buys a new mobile from the first shop he comes to, with a new number. It’s top of the line, the latest on the market, all the apps and blinding speed he’s done without. He texts the number to Harry, Sarah Sawyer, and no one else. Not Lestrade. Not Molly. Not Mike Stamford. Not Mrs. Hudson. It’s pointless, of course. Sherlock is Sherlock, and if that’s not enough, he has Mycroft, so he can get the number any time he likes. John’s cutting his ties. He doesn’t want to go out with Lestrade and commiserate over how they’ve been fooled. He doesn’t want any reminders.

As he walks from the tube to his flat he pauses to crushes the sim card under his heel. It and the battery go into the sewer. At the surgery he’ll dump the pills he’s so carefully collected into the biohazard bin.

He’s free.  
  
+  
  
A damp fall breeze tugs at Sherlock’s coat when he rings the bell at 221 Baker Street. Someone’s briefed Mrs. Hudson because she does none of the things an elderly woman should do when the man she loved like a son appears on her doorstep, back from the dead. She doesn’t exclaim, or put her hand to her heart, or flutter, or say _Sherlock_ in that fond tone of voice she used. Sherlock appreciates her sensible, rational reaction. She opens the door, then walks back to her flat, where she makes tea, sets a plate of biscuits in front of him.

“I’d like to move back in,” he says. He’s been gone for two years. He wants his life back. 221B Baker Street, John, his experiments, his work with Lestrade, once Mycroft clears up the tedious business of his reputation.

But there will be no John.

“The flat isn’t available, Sherlock.” She’s made herself a cup of tea, too, but she’s not sipping it. Instead her fingers worry at the lace trimmed place mat and she looks out the window, at the bins. “They’re a nice couple. A solicitor and a financial planner. They helped me with the bank when I… They’re very quiet. I hardly know they’re up there. You understand.”

It occurs to him that she looks like she did when he found her with the Americans. Holding firm against a threat, and more than a little angry.

“Yes,” he says. “Of course.”

The sun is setting earlier and earlier these days. That explains the darkness lingering in alleys and doorways, but not the growing sense of weight sloshing inside him.  
  
Mycroft puts him up at a hotel while his belongings are removed from storage and transferred to a flat on Montague Street, not far from Baker Street. Sherlock finds having his things in the wrong flat and no John unsettling and unacceptable. The building owners vehemently refuse to allow a chemistry lab in the flat, and threaten to sue if he sets up one. Barts bans him from the premises, grounds included, as does every other hospital and teaching institution in the greater London metropolitan area. Mycroft hires a solicitor to navigate the labyrinthine legal mess left behind, but even with Mycroft’s connections, having been declared dead is not a simple matter to rectify. The tabloids flare hot and fierce for a few days, then hare off after newer news. He is, after all, two years out of date and still discredited with his victories from the last two years buried deep in classified reports.

In a word, he’s boring.

No one texts, or even calls. The tabloids do, of course, as well as agents eager to broker public appearances or a publishing deal. Mycroft also calls, but only to firmly squelch any notion of selling his story, or making up a cracking good story full of sex and intrigue and mystery and motorcycle chases across the rooftops and selling that. But not Mrs. Hudson. Or Lestrade, who could provide Sherlock with work to relieve the boredom.

Not John.

He could find John. One text to Mycroft and he’d have his phone number and address. He doesn’t send the text. Even before they started sleeping together, John never shied away from physical contact with Sherlock. They’d walked in on each other in the bathroom, stumbled into the kitchen naked, crouched behind bins pressed together from shoulder to ankle. But at the bed and breakfast John had been very careful to stay out of Sherlock’s reach, as if the possibility of Sherlock touching him was physically repellant.

In other words, he’d looked at Sherlock like Sherlock looked at the rest of the world.  
  
+  
  
Driven to distraction, he texts Lestrade.  
Pub? SH  
  
Lestrade arrives late, even with Sherlock lying about the time to adjust for his average thirty-seven minute delay. He doesn’t remove his coat. “Where were you?” he says without preamble.

“Classified,” Sherlock says. Also dull, because it’s done and he won. It’s time for a new game, new challenges, new opponents. He looks Lestrade over, then says, “How long did you suffer in Traffic purgatory?”

“Eighteen months,” Lestrade says. He’s not smiling; his dark eyes flash black in the pub’s dim lights as he signals the ‘keep for a pint.

“The Chief Superintendent has the memory of an elephant and holds a grudge. Going to the wall for you cost me eighteen months of my career and a chunk of salary. My wife went back to work to keep the house. I’ve been back on Major Cases for — “

“Four months, with a commensurate increase in salary. Based on your new wedding ring uniting to overcome the financial hindrance strengthened your marriage.”

Lestrade just stares at him until his pint arrives. He swallows half in two gulps, then says, “Did John get a new mobile? I texted him last week and got a query from some other bloke who’d just gotten the number.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

John said _piss off_. John looked like Sherlock, then walked away. “He’s not speaking to me.”

“Not surprising.”

It’s Sherlock’s turn to stare at Lestrade, because that’s an amazing deduction given Lestrade hadn’t seen John’s face in the rain.

“So. What’s on?” Sherlock asks briskly.

“You think we’ll go back to the way things were?”

“Of course we will.”

“No, we won’t.” Lestrade doesn’t bother to lower his voice. “I just got back to the good stuff, Sherlock. Right now what matters is that I work my cases, keep my nose clean, and stay out of the spotlight.” He pushes away from the bar, leaving his pint unfinished and Sherlock to pay the tab. “Welcome home.”  
  
+  
   
A second visit to Mrs. Hudson reveals she’s really quite peeved with him. She makes one cup of tea, which sloshes into the saucer when she sets (slams?) it onto the table in front of him, and doesn’t offer biscuits.

“Why were you gone so long?”

Why doesn’t anyone understand? “I had to do it. He was going to kill you, John, Lestrade.”

“Why didn’t you tell us somehow?”

_Because if one of you spilt the beans, I’d lose._

“No one could know,” he says.

She says nothing for a while, just stares out the window. “I had to ask him to move out, Sherlock.”

“Of course you did,” he says quickly, seizing the common ground because that he understands. “He couldn’t afford the flat on his salary alone.”

She stares at him. “Sherlock,” she repeats. “ _I_ had to ask _John_ , who I’d grown to _care for_ , who was _grieving_ , to move out of his _home_.”

_Bit not good_ echoes in Sherlock’s head. It’s John’s voice, but with a mocking lilt.

He finishes his tea in silence. Mrs. Hudson doesn’t give him a kiss goodbye.

A groan inside as mass settles into a space he didn’t even know was empty.

He stands on the pavement in front of Speedy’s and tugs on his gloves. He needs more data.  
  
+  
  
Harry Watson agrees to meet Sherlock at Simpson’s. The room is quite busy with people clustered in the foyer, waiting for tables. He’s getting his share of glances, and a few camera phones are out, so he’s relieved to see Harry emerge from a cab. She looks like John, especially around the eyes and chin. The cab continues to idle at the curb. Before he’s done more than deduce _sober working in good job in finance based on the watch eighteen months into a relationship with someone she loves enough to fight the alcohol_ she walks through the restaurant’s front door and drives her fist into Sherlock’s cheekbone. Fiery pain explodes behind his eye and streaks to his ear as he staggers into the wall.

“Stay away from my brother,” Harry snarls into the shocked silence. Then she walks back out the door and gets back into the cab.

The whole thing takes fifteen seconds, perhaps less. Phones come out, point in his direction.

Sherlock rights himself, straightens his jacket. “I no longer require the table,” he says to the maitre ‘d over the ringing in his ear. Then he leaves.

 

What was it Irene cooed when she saw John’s careful tap to Sherlock’s face? _Somebody loves you_.

Harry Watson most definitely does not love Sherlock. She does, however, love her brother: John’s the person Harry Watson loved so much she gave up an adult lifetime of alcoholism.

Which means…? He reverses the logic.  

John was so badly damaged he needed her sober.

  
 

Over the course of a fortnight the bruise flares black-and-blue, then purple, then fades to a sickly green, then yellow. As befitting a consulting detective, Sherlock scientifically details the bruise’s lifespan with pictures and descriptions of the tenderness. Research tells him to count himself lucky she didn’t fracture his eye socket. The Watsons know a bit of street fighting.

He remembers John throwing a punch for him and getting arrested for his trouble, then dragged through London handcuffed to Sherlock.

_We’re going to have to coordinate._

_Harry and me don’t get on._

_Caring is not an advantage._

Except when it is. He ponders the intricacies of loyalty, the complexity of sibling relationships, and the shifting value of advantages.  
   
+  
  
Sarah Sawyer arrives late at Attikis, the Greek restaurant she and John liked so much. She takes her seat and whisks her napkin to the side just as the waiter sets a platter at her place.

“I’m not eating, but I ordered for you,” Sherlock says. Based on fragments of conversation and smells clinging to John’s clothes he’s ordered the lemon chicken orzo soup, fish kabobs, and elliniko cafe. Exactly what she likes. John preferred the mixed grill. “You’re due back at the surgery quite soon and they prepare fish kabobs fresh.”

Sarah’s gaze flicks to the fading bruise on his cheekbone, but she doesn’t ask, just sets the napkin flat on the table. “When he didn’t respond to texts, I’d start looking for him. After the second time I knew exactly where to go. He’d be in Speedy’s, nursing a cup of tea, watching out the window. Musharraf told me he’d be there when they opened and he’d close the place down.”

The words crack in the air like she’s clapped her hands. Sherlock startles.

_Can you hear me?_

“He was wrecked. Do you…no, _can_ you understand that? He couldn’t get out of bed for _weeks._ ”

She’s talking at him like she would talk to a patient wavering in and out of consciousness, searching for the right combination of words and intonation to make a connection. Sarah Sawyer is coming at him like she’s making a last ditch effort to save a life. Or end it.

_Do you know what happened?_

“He lost a stone before I moved in and started forcing food into him. He would forget where he was, what he was doing. We double checked his orders at the surgery, just to be safe, and a good thing, too, but I refused to fire him. John Watson is built to take care of people. He needed that job.”

_Do you know who John Watson is?_

Yes! He knew exactly who John Watson is. None of this would have worked without John.

But that is not what she means.

What does she mean?

_Did you mean it?_

He has no idea what to say.

Tears gleam in her eyes before she looks to the side and blinks them away. “Moving out of the flat nearly broke him. Mrs. Hudson let him stay as long as she could, but…he couldn’t afford it on his pension and clinic salary.”

She hasn’t touched her meal. “You like the kabobs,” he prompts.

She stares at him until he looks away. It occurs to him that Sarah does not love, admire, respect, or even care about Sherlock. Hippocratic oath notwithstanding, odds are good that if Sherlock were trapped in a house fire, Sarah would nip down to the corner petrol station to buy an accelerant rather than save him because Sherlock took away the character trait that most defined John: his ability to work, to serve, to help.

_Do you know what you’ve done?_

They sit in silence for a few moments. “John Watson is the best man to walk the face of the earth, but you must not have known.” Her words are gentle, even sad for Sherlock’s utter stupidity. “That’s the only way I can explain all of this to myself. You didn’t know.

Because if you had, not even you would have done what you did to him.”

The first hint of emotion tendrils through him. He recognizes it: shame, an emotion he hates and fears because it reminds him of the time _before John_ , when he was vulnerable, so he tries to explain in terms she would understand. “Moriarty’s organization was a global cancer. I had to eradicate it.”

One eyebrow lifts, and Sherlock remembers that this woman held strong in the face of Shan’s arrows. “Did you? I believe that our nation possesses a rather formidable intelligence community. God knows the Americans are always looking for a chance to trot out the SEALs then make a film about it. Yet you and you alone were the only man able to destroy it? Sounds like something out of Ian Fleming.”

He’s been called _insufferable egomaniacal prat fuck off freak_ far less politely.

“I did not know if they would be safe until all of Moriarty’s seconds were eliminated,” he says, appealing now to sentiment. “I trusted no one else to make them safe.”

She looks at him as if he is a waste of skin. When she replies, her voice holds the unshakeable confidence of a woman about to speak truth to power. “Last month an eight-year-old boy cut his hand on a piece of gymnasium equipment and contracted a bacterial infection that wasn’t properly diagnosed until it went septicemic. I stood in a hospital room watching his parents curl around their son’s body and weep as, one by one, his internal organs shut down. We’re none of us safe. What’s a bullet through the brain? We have tumors, aneurisms, cancer. Heart attacks. A car accident, a fall from a ladder, stepping in front of a bus. We’re none of us ever _safe_. Safe is an illusion. You cannot make anyone _safe_ , least of all yourself. It’s why we have to love so completely.”

The words land with the impact of an old-fashioned slap, triggering a moment of clarity heretofore reserved for acid trips, cocaine highs, and John with a crop in his hand. Her words aren’t filtered by that unconscious prioritization of Sherlock’s goals, Sherlock’s drive, Sherlock’s choices, Sherlock’s superiority. In the pairing of John and Sherlock, Sherlock and John, Sarah alone believes that John got the short end of the stick. Sarah alone believes that brilliant, beautiful, impeccably dressed Sherlock Holmes is the luckiest bastard ever to have short, stocky, questionably jumpered John Watson trailing in his wake.

Sherlock left him.

She stands and, despite Sherlock’s inarticulate protest, leaves several notes by her untouched plate. “Was whatever you accomplished worth John Watson?”

He looks up at her, unable to process the question.

“You’ve destroyed him to get what you wanted. Was the sacrifice of years of his life, very nearly his sanity, worth what you gained?”

He can’t say yes. He can’t say no. So he says nothing. Sarah Sawyer won that battle.

She leaves without saying goodbye.  
  
+  
  
There are no texts from John.  
  
John said _piss off._  
  
+  
  
He walks back to his flat via Baker Street, and stands across the street from Speedy’s, watching people come and go from the shop, coffee and sandwiches and pastries in hand or in white paper sacks. A young woman dressed in black, an iPod in hand and a hard-sided cello case on her back, stands next to him waiting for someone _boyfriend no girlfriend with two cats one a tortoiseshell before going to rehearsal no audition_. Faure’s Requiem drifts from her earbuds. He recognizes the soprano’s solo in the _Pie Jesu_ , asking for _rest, rest, everlasting rest_.

His ribs strain to contain something what is it what is this? as he watched people come and go from Speedy’s, but not John. He’s alive, but dead to John. John is not dead but gone. He cannot answer a simple question.

_Did you mean it?_

He thinks of a rainy hillside in Wales, where John’s face mirrored Sherlock back to himself. Damaged, beautiful, so _beautiful crumpled and devastated and furious and pure and true and alone_. Wrong. Fundamentally wrong. He knows what he is, and he does not want John to become like him. He never wanted John to be like him. He needs John to be John. Everyone needs John to be John.

_You’ve destroyed him to get what you wanted._

Which meant: _  
_

_You made him like you._

  
Sherlock stares at the exterior of his former life, the one that is now closed to him in every possible way, and decides he will conduct an experiment. Human beings can’t actually delete things from their memories. He is no different in that regard. When he says he deleted something he intends to convey to the idiot of the moment that he refuses to discuss that subject. All his memories of John are there. After all, one does not have a functioning mind palace unless one retains all of one’s memories. Information is organized according to usefulness, wit and brilliance flying from the turrets and towers, chemistry, mathematics, physics, relevant data easily at hand in the battlements, descending through routine daily needs  in the state apartments, to the gigabytes of data that may or may not become relevant, stored in the drawing rooms, spacious banquet halls, ballrooms, galleries, libraries, chapels, kitchens, wine cellars, and storage rooms. Under this groaning testament to memory, intellect, and cleverness are the palace’s foundations. Basements. Priest’s holes. Dungeons.

Solitary confinement and torture chambers.

All palaces have them, these unspeakable places. Here there be dragons, as the saying goes, in the places off his mental map.  
Here be traitors, threats to the king, mutinous emotions, subversive needs, seditious desires, wild threats — memories drenched in emotion — are confined here, behind doors made of sturdy oak and iron, set in stone walls.  
  
He will open a door in the stone cellar forming the foundation of the mind palace. As an experiment. He’s a _machine_ , after all. A _fucking selfish_ one. How dangerous can it be?  
  
+  
  
He walks home, sheds his coat and jacket, and situates himself on the couch, fingers tented under his nose.  
  
 _Did you mean it?_  
  
The simple question wasn’t a plea. John wasn’t begging Sherlock to confess his love. It was a challenge, one Sherlock failed. Being able to answer that question holds the key to his future.  
Context.  
  
I love you. SH  
 _Did you mean it?_  
  
He didn’t know. He knew what was coming, years of separation, knew he would experience a sense of loss without John’s presence at his side. He knew what it meant to John. But did he mean it like John meant it when he murmured the words in the dark of their bed?  
  
John loved…so he grieved. Deeply. Terribly. Sherlock reverses the logic.  
  
If he didn’t grieve, then he didn’t love, and he would move on. If he did…  
  
If he, the selfish machine, could grieve, he would know he loved.  
   
Start simple. Start with John asking for a kiss.  
  
 _Because it’s what people do when they’re —_  
  
Vulnerability swamps him. Not his own. John’s. And Sherlock said —  
  
 _The man who invaded Afghanistan wants a kiss._  
  
Water seeped under the oak door suppressing this particular memory.  
  
Again.  
  
 _Has anyone ever used his body to make you feel good? Not to take something from you, or teach you a lesson?_  
  
No. Not until you.  
  
A sound echoes inside him, a structure under immense pressure.  
  
And he said —  
  
 _Really, John, I expected more from an Army doctor._  
  
No.  
  
Again.  
  
 _What did you do before I moved in?_  
  
John cared _for_ him, took care _of_ him. And he said —  
  
 _I no longer need to go out in search of a blow job._  
  
Again.  
  
 _I’m not sure someone with your history should do this._  
  
And he said —  
  
 _Is there anything you won't do for me?_  
  
 _Proceed._  
  
The creaking coheres in his mind. It’s the sound of hewn granite architecture under immense strain, pressure building past tolerances. Buttresses swaying and cracking.  
  
Again.  
  
 _Come to bed with me, Sherlock._  
 _I love you, I love you, I love you._  
  
John offered himself to Sherlock without a shred of self-protection. The sheer vulnerability of saying it first to a man he knew wouldn’t, couldn’t say it back. And Sherlock said —  
  
 _It’s been a brilliant adventure, John. Brilliant._

  
  
Sherlock clenches his fists in his hair, fighting to shore up the infrastructure of his mind. It doesn’t work. The memory of the expression on John Watson’s face in the back seat of Mycroft’s car, when he realized Sherlock deceived him, that Sherlock took John’s love and used it to win, bursts forth. The way the corners of his eyes and his cheeks sagged, the sharp, dark anguish and sheer horror in his eyes.  
  
No.  
  
Displaced from their equilibrium, the large mass of memory, terrors, and shame gains speed and strength, until a tsunami of emotion crashes against wood and stone. Metal rivets pop and shriek as they explode from their moorings. Like the explosion that shattered the windows at 221B the doors crash open and he tumbles into the depths.    
  
+

  
He’s drowning.

  
+  
  
Clock and calendar lose both relevance and meaning underwater. Without any sense of the passage of time, Sherlock drifts with the current of emotion, battered by the wreckage of his mind. Through the murky depths he hears clear, harrowing notes, a haunting chorus of emotion, piercing his soul. Fear, shame, discovery, surprise, wonder, courage, pity, hope, happiness, amusement, anger, disgust, trust. Depression, sadness, melancholy. Desolation. Hopelessness.    
  
Is this grief, this tumult, this roil of memory and despair?  
  
There’s no answer. John answered these questions for him, and John is gone.  
  
+  
  
He makes a stunning leap for a self-identified sociopath. He cannot select specific difficult emotions and quarantine them any more than he can select the exquisite ones and cling to them. To experience joy he had to let in sorrow. To experience love he had to let in heartbreak. To experience delight he had to let in _boringdullwrong_. To claim strength he had to be intensely, frighteningly vulnerable.  
Emotions aren’t selective. Each has an opposite, two sides of the same coin.  
  
+  
  
It takes him a very long time to realize these things, because John isn’t there to walk beside him and explain them. Besides, if John were there, he wouldn’t bother to walk this path. He has to do this himself. The transformation of a human soul takes time, and it can only be done alone.  
  
He leaves his violin untouched in the case. Mould creeps over the bread on the counter, the food in the fridge. He discards them, buys new, watches them mould. Time lapse photography happens while he sits in the kitchen and listens to the haunting notes echoing in his soul.  
  
+  
  
In this clouded, drifting void he finally sees himself for what he was. Moriarty’s whole scheme depended on Sherlock being Sherlock — proud and arrogant and isolated and callous — which he’d done beautifully. He’d walked himself up to that roof because he stood for himself, his own brilliance, taking for granted John and everyone else in his life, and he’d fallen for Moriarty’s gambit. Because Sherlock Holmes should have what he wants.

_He_ was wrong, fundamentally wrong in every way, and so eager to point it out to everyone else. He was beautiful enough to fuck, but not to love. Until John. He was clever enough to outsmart everyone, but not clever enough to love. Most people were stupid about everything but able to love and be loved. He was absolutely brilliant, more stunning than supernovas and the Northern lights, but love escaped him.

Until John.

But when John stood beside him, John stood for himself, and Sherlock, and love and honor and commitment. He made Sherlock a better man. Sherlock’s mock-suicide shattered that. Lestrade, Harry, Mrs. Hudson, Sarah told him so.

His heart told him so.  
  
 _Did you mean it?_  
  
+  
  
One afternoon shortly after the Christmas holiday Sherlock ignored, Mycroft appears in the flat, umbrella in hand. He winces at the smell, then opens the living room windows. Cold air swirls in to pool at Sherlock’s feet.

Mycroft pokes at the stacks of unread newspapers, examines the rotting food in the fridge. “No word from Lestrade.”

“No.” He is tainted goods, so the Yard is dragging their collective plodding feet on his case. Sherlock hasn’t thought about it for weeks.

“I could have you back in their good graces with one phone call.”

“No. If they don’t complete their own investigation, my contributions will be suspect for the rest of my life.” He cannot live anywhere but London, and Mycroft quashing the investigation will cost him any relationship with the Yard, and likely any law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. If he doesn’t have that, he has nothing at all. “Let them finish it in their own time. Lestrade will ensure it’s done properly.”

Mycroft sheds his jacket, rolls his sleeves to his elbows, then efficiently cleans out the fridge and sorts the recycling. Sherlock watches, wondering when Mycroft last performed any sort of manual labor. He should do it himself. He knows that. But he can’t. Working through an adult lifetime of suppressed emotion consumes all of his energy even without the grief, the all-encompassing, wrenching grief. Once feeling returned, it wouldn’t stop.  

The counters are clean, new bread and milk and biscuits neatly put away, when Mycroft rolls down his sleeves. “He hasn’t called. Texted.”

No need to specify which _he_ Mycroft means. “No.”

Mycroft puts on his jacket, then jabs rather viciously with his umbrella at the parquet flooring. “Surely he understands that you did your duty by Queen and country. There was no other alternative.”

Sherlock slowly turns his head to look at his brother. They can pretend Sherlock disappeared for two years for Queen and country, but they both know better. “He does not have to live with the consequences of my decisions. That is his right, his decision.”

“You do not deserve this. He’s punishing you.”

_I’m punishing myself. It’s time to pay for what I am._

“What do we, who believe caring is not an advantage, deserve? Did I deserve John?”

Silence.

“I brought this on myself.”

Muttering under his breath, Mycroft leaves. Sherlock sits in the increasingly cold room and watches darkness fall.  
  
+  
  
This is too much for him, which feels like failure. Perhaps he should have started with something less complex than grief and love. Perhaps he should have started with affection. Perhaps he should have paid attention to emoticons when John tried to explain them.  
  
One note repeats itself with clarity, high, transfixing, and true. It’s love. Love, submerged for so long, now sings out pure and clear, even in the depths.  
  
 _John? I meant it, even if I didn’t know it, even if I didn’t know what love was or could be, how it permeates your entire soul, colors your every action, I meant it._  
  
 _John?_  
  
He’d failed.  
John left.  
  
The year creeps to a close. Light disappears as he sinks deeper into void.


	7. The Mood It Changes Like The Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Or an apology.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fan art by the amazing Justgot1 at the end. It's GORGEOUS. Exactly how I imagined a key moment in this installment. See it here: [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/788149/chapters/1512657) and here: [Tumblr](http://justgot1.tumblr.com/post/50386648856/forgive-me-fan-art-for-nostraightlines-the-mood)

“Ta, Leslie.”

John tugs on his gloves, tightens his muffler, and gathers his single bag of shopping containing the ingredients for shrimp biryani. Leslie climbs back on her stepladder to finish taking down garish gold Christmas garland from over the checkout lane, and John pushes out into the winter air, headed for his flat. It’s a dry cold, for once. His shoulder aches less on days like this, when there isn’t a hint of rain, but either way, he doesn’t mind the walk. He focuses on the pavement under his feet, the air’s dry texture in his nostrils and lungs, the pleasant weight of the bag in his hand.

Little things, but they’re his, here and now. He does not wish for more.

When John’s two blocks from home Mycroft’s car pulls to the kerb half a block ahead of him. John steadfastly ignores the car door opening, Mycroft emerging, placing himself directly in John’s path.

“Hello, John,” he calls in a slightly raised voice.

“Dr. Watson,” John says.

It’s the third time in the four months since Sherlock’s resurrection Mycroft has waylaid him between work, the shops, and his flat, but this is the first time John’s responded in any way to his voice or presence. The man who is the British government swallows his not inconsiderable pride. John watches the lump make its way down his esophagus, into his gut, like a snake that swallowed a goat. He hopes he chokes on it.

“Dr. Watson.” A pause John ignores. “I am here to ask you to see my brother again.”

John keeps walking without veering right or left, directly for Mycroft. “Did he send you?”

“No.” Mycroft grimaces, steps neatly to the side, and gives the umbrella a little spin as he falls in beside John. “I am an ambassador without portfolio.”

Whatever the fuck that means. John finds he’s still sick to death of the Holmes brothers, their accessories, their expensive clothes, their propensity to use ordinary people to further their own ends, their willingness to lie about every-fucking-thing. Of course Sherlock sent him.  

“I’m better, Mycroft,” he says to the man matching his pace as if they were mates. “Just the nightmares about Afghanistan now. No cane, either. I’m working. Not my ideal job, but it’s a job. Thanks for asking.”

Mycroft has the decency to flush. “I’m glad to hear it, Dr. Watson.”

The victory is small, and petty. “He’s dead, Mycroft. Remember? He’s dead. You’re asking me to see a dead man.”

“He’s grieving your loss.”

“Sherlock Holmes cannot possibly feel enough to mourn,” John dismisses. The biryani will be a good one. Leslie’s brother-in-law has a connection that supplies fresh seafood. He can smell the shrimp, taste the fresh ginger. It’s sheer delight, the ability to anticipate something as simple as the flavors of food he’s cooked himself. “There’s no benefit to mourning. No advantage. Nothing to win.”

“You’re wrong, Dr. Watson.”

John refuses to be drawn into a schoolyard argument that will go something like _No I’m not Yes you are No I’m not Yes you are_. He just keeps walking, his brain focused on the slippery feel of peeling the shrimp, removing the vein from the curvature of the back, the crackle as they sauté in butter.

“See for yourself,” Mycroft calls.

The hint of desperation in his voice makes John turn, braced against an(other) ambush, but it’s just Mycroft, propped on his umbrella by a black car.

He turns his back on Mycroft and walks home.

  
He makes the biryani, the meal as delightful as the process, and stows the rest in the fridge for lunch on Saturday. He watches a documentary on otters, then goes to bed. It’s not much of a life, a frankly pathetic one for a man in his forties, a doctor and a soldier, but John no longer takes simple pleasures for granted. He’s able to enjoy this. For now, it’s enough.

He falls asleep, dreams he’s clawing at the spokes of a black umbrella that’s blocking his view of something he has to see. Must see. His arm is clothed in camouflage, and his heart beats as erratically as the gunfire to his right. When he gets the umbrella down, brilliant sunshine nearly blinds him. He blinks until his eyes adjust to a dusty road outside the FOB. In the aftermath of two IEDs a squad of soldiers shouts, hunkers down in case they come under fire, dragging their injured mates to safety. John recognizes the scene, one of the last he’d seen before getting shot himself. Sweat and dust coat his boots, his face.

Sherlock is there, barefoot, bareheaded, unarmed. It’s the aftermath of a war zone explosion that killed four and injured a dozen, but all he wears is the aubergine shirt and dark trousers.

_Get away_ , John shouts. _Don’t look!_

Sherlock ignores him, then reaches into the wreckage of the Humvee. John remembers what comes out of that particular section of vehicle, a torso with a blank-eyed, helmeted head and arms, and nothing below the pelvis but trailing intestines and seared meat.

_Sherlock! No!_

Instead of the ravaged torso, Sherlock holds up his head by the hair. Blood seeps not from the neck, strangely jagged as if cut away from his body with the edging John recognizes from his mother’s pinking shears, but from the macabre mask’s mouth, nose, and ears.  
Sherlock scoops a finger into the mask’s mouth, draws it back clotted with blood, and tastes it. John is swimming in wet cement, fighting his way through the soldiers, past the wounded, screaming Sherlock’s name, but he can’t get there. He knows he can’t.  

Blood, oil, and petrol spilled through the jagged hole in the vehicle’s floor, and it’s spattered with bone and intestines. Sherlock drops to his knees by the Humvee, hunches over, and laps at the crimson soaking into the dirt in the same businesslike fashion as the skinny, fur-matted dogs gathering in the aftermath of the fight. The dogs of war. Grieving soldiers lift the butts of their rifles to drive them off, but they close in on Sherlock.

_SHERLOCK! Sher — !_

Sherlock looks up at John, his nose and mouth coated with gore as the rifle butts descend.

John screams himself awake. He barely makes it to the toilet before he vomits up the biryani.    
  
+  
  
The next day in the break room he catches a whiff of someone’s reheated lunch. It’s curry, not biryani, but the scents are close enough that John flashes back to the dream. He fights down a wave of nausea before shoving his sack lunch back into the fridge and returning to his office.

Dreams are meaningless, products of the brain’s efforts to sort the events of the day, the experiences of a lifetime. It’s not unusual that he’d dream of Sherlock and Afghanistan.

Except it is. He’s dreamed of Sherlock. He’s dreamed of Afghanistan. Never like this.

At home, he bins the leftover biryani and makes a sausage frittata for dinner.

Three days later he hasn’t stopped thinking about it, the umbrella, the blood, Sherlock’s face. He calls Mycroft from the clinic and leaves a message with the assistant. “He can have ten minutes tonight. That’s it.”  
  
+  
  
Sherlock’s sitting at the small table in the kitchen, staring out the window as the sun sets behind a low bank of clouds. The weather matches his mood, dull, unrelentingly cold, which makes it easy to ignore the persistent buzz of the doorbell. When his mobile vibrates he glances at it. The texts are always from Mycroft, but hope, he’s found, never truly disappears, no matter how how futile the circumstances.

Answer your door, Sherlock. I’ve sent a car for you. John has agreed to see you. MH

This is an impossibility, but Sherlock will play along with Mycroft’s little joke.

Why did he make this offer? SH

I asked him. MH

Sherlock closes his eyes. It’s not a joke.

He asked me to leave him alone. SH

It’s really the only thing he ever asked of me. SH

I am not you. MH

True on so many levels.

No. SH

Please. MH

Mycroft never says _please_ and means it. Never. Like Sherlock, he doesn’t need to. It’s a meaningless word used as a placeholder in the standard conversational rhythm between individuals, not a true plea. Sherlock cannot imagine what Mycroft’s actually done to prompt such supplication, but whatever it is gives Sherlock leverage.

You must promise to leave him alone. SH

I give you my word. MH

Sherlock pulls on his coat against the biting January cold. A car and impassive driver wait outside his building. He gets into the back seat and closes the door.

John didn’t ask for this. He doesn’t want to see Sherlock.

Sherlock thinks about what he wants to say, what’s important. He will apologize. He will ask for forgiveness.  

He does not allow himself to hope to get it.    
  
+  
  
It’s exactly six o’clock when the doorbell for the building entrance rings. John simply buzzes Sherlock in, cracks open his door, then stands by the desk. He’s thought very carefully about what he intends to accomplish in the next ten minutes. He’s going to reassure his subconscious that after nearly five months of Lazarus-like resurrection, Sherlock is hale and hearty, not in need of rescuing or saving or John. Ten minutes is plenty for that. Ten seconds should do the trick.

The steps coming slowly up the stairs scuff rather than bound, so that can’t be Sherlock. John looks at his watch. When he looks up, Sherlock stands in the open door. He takes two oddly hesitant steps into the flat, then stops.

John folds his arms.

Sherlock folds to his knees.

The cheap carpet muffles the impact, or maybe Sherlock just doesn’t weigh much anymore. It’s oddly graceless for the man who once danced his way into a bit of rough. He stays there for a long moment, hands loose at his sides, swaying slightly, looking at John. His eyes red-rimmed, and anguished. Then he bows his head. One hand lifts to hover over his cranium, trembling, until the long fingers weave into the hair and clench tight.

Memory echoes through space and time. _Do you want me to beg? I will._

“John, I beg of you…” His words trail off into a faint, “Wrong.”

John’s not sure if Sherlock can’t find words, or if he’s delirious from exhaustion, and/or hunger, and/or dehydration. The door to the hall is still open. Possibly Sherlock doesn’t care if anyone sees him so humiliated, on his knees. Possibly it’s an oddly elaborate courtesy, making it easy for John to throw him out.

Hand still fisted in his hair, Sherlock clears his throat. The dry rasp makes John flinch. “John, I am sorry. Forgive me. Please. I beg of you…forgive me.”

Sherlock’s velvet voice is broken. His cheekbones cut like knives, and his hair is too long, even for Sherlock’s standards. The folds of the coat weigh down his frame as if his shoulders have all the heft and resistance of a plastic hanger. The trousers so tightly tailored to his body three years ago now ride too low on his hips, show no hint of thigh. John controls a body-length flinch when Sherlock lifts his gaze back to John’s.

What in God’s name has Sherlock done to himself?

John walks past the man kneeling in his living room and closes the door.

  
Hands now on his hips, John studies the skin and bones on his knees in front of him, and lets the doctor takes over.

“When did you last eat?”

Sherlock shakes his head.

“Drink?”

Another shake.

“Are you working? Lestrade? Your brother?”

A third shake.

“Answer me.”

“No. I’m not working. I’m not cleared yet.”

John thinks of the many, many things Sherlock does when he’s bored, none of them healthy outlets for stress. “What are you doing besides not eating, not drinking, and not working? Drugs?” Drugs might explain his condition.

“No.” The word has a sharp edge to it. Sherlock’s still in there somewhere.

“Playing the violin?”

The hand slips from nape to lap. Sherlock stares at it as if fingers and palm comprise a foreign object grafted onto the end of his arm. “I’ve lost interest.”

John scoffs.

“I left it behind.”

John waits for the melodrama. _I left behind everything I love._ It doesn’t come, so Sherlock lives to see another minute, but John’s done with the solicitous inquiries.

“What the _fucking fuck_ have you done to yourself?”

“Followed you,” Sherlock says. His voice rasps over the words. “You would have followed me into hell. It was my turn to follow you.”

John thinks about the howling void where he spent the last two years. It is hell. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even on Sherlock.

_You’re an idiot._

The response is as automatic as assessing Sherlock’s condition, but he doesn’t say the words. “I’ve got leftover frittata,” he says instead.

He leaves the folded creature on his floor to follow him. In the kitchen he busies himself removing the storage container from a meticulously clean fridge, heating it in the equally pristine microwave. After he pushes Start he runs a glass of water and sets it on the kitchen table Sherlock’s shambling towards.

“Drink that.”

He expects an argument. Instead Sherlock eases into a chair, then swallows all of the water in three gulps. While the microwave hums, John reaches out and lays the back of his hand against Sherlock’s forehead, then takes his pulse at his unresisting wrist.

“I’m not ill.”

“Did you get a medical degree while you were dead?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.”

Astonishingly, Sherlock shuts up. John continues his assessment. It’s winter in London so everyone’s pasty, but Sherlock’s beyond that, into an unhealthy pallor. No fever, a solid fifty beats a minute, breathing also slow but both within normal bounds. John knows perfectly well that healthy individuals don’t die from heartbreak, but they do die of hunger and dehydration. He refills the glass, sets the plate on the table in front of Sherlock. He doesn’t sit.

Sherlock mechanically makes an effort to eat what’s on his plate. He sips more water every three bites. John stops him at half of the frittata. “That’s more than I’ve ever seen you eat at one sitting.”

Sherlock looks at the plate, the table, the counter, then focuses his gaze ever so slightly to the left of John’s eyes. John gestures to the plate. _Be my guest._

Sherlock eats a few more bites, then sets his fork neatly on the plate. “Thank you.”

John removes the plate and glass. He scrapes the remainders into the bin, rinses the dishes. When he turns around, Sherlock’s standing by the chair. It’s unusual, downright disconcerting, watching imperious Sherlock duck his gaze. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“You’re welcome,” John says. “You need to leave.”

A miniscule flinch. “May I see you again?”

His voice is quiet, so quiet, as if he expects a refusal but is compelled to ask. Perhaps he is. John didn’t respond to his plea, and he knows he didn’t.

The truth is, he doesn’t know how he feels about seeing Sherlock again. He just doesn’t know. Sherlock isn’t dead. He’s done something to himself, and the Sherlock who came back and pronounced death a _brilliant adventure_ would not have bothered to transform himself into this wreck for John. The man before him is incapable of lying. Or manipulating. For the moment. Sherlock was dead for over two years and came back no different. Four months of being alive and he’s wrecked. So what has he done, and why has he done it?

_Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me._

He takes his internal temperature. There will be rules. John will make them. Sherlock must come to him. He won’t see Sherlock anywhere but a place that has no associated memories of them. There will be no crime scenes, no more spur-of-the-moment trips to the morgue or the chemist’s, no late nights crouched behind skips or in abandoned buildings, no more John following Sherlock anywhere. He will see Sherlock like he’d see any other casual acquaintance: infrequently, on neutral territory.

“Yes. Text me.”

“May I have your mobile number?”

_Lies? Already?_

Fury reassembles itself, a black swirl of jagged, razor edges he swings at Sherlock like a cosh. “Fucking hell, Sherlock! You got it from Mycroft as soon as you realized I got a new mobile!”

Sherlock’s eyes widen as he grips the back of the kitchen chair. “I did not. I — .”

“You sent Mycroft to harass me!”

“I did not know Mycroft took it upon himself to visit you until he told me you’d agreed to see me. Said visits will stop immediately.”

John’s mouth shuts with an audible click.

For the first time in their entire relationship, Sherlock Holmes respected a boundary.

John holds out his hand. Sherlock reaches into his coat pocket and withdraws a mobile, then, as if he knows better than to initiate contact given John’s current frame of mind, sets it on the table between them. John plucks it from the laminate surface and scrolls through Sherlock’s contacts. There is indeed no John Watson, although Sherlock could have deleted the contact before plodding up the stairs, or entered his number under another name.

John refuses to hold hands with paranoia, just enters his name, his new mobile number. “Text me,” he repeats, keeping his voice steady as he sets the phone on the table.

Sherlock doesn’t push his luck. He doesn’t ask if he’s forgiven. He doesn’t ask when he can come. He picks up the phone, says _thank you_ one last time. Then he leaves.  
  
+  
  
Sherlock eases into the fine leather of Mycroft’s back seat and folds his arms across his abdomen. Months of little food, too much sleep, and emotional turmoil have left him foggy, slow, dull. _Think_ , he berated himself. _Observe. What did you observe?_

John is still livid. The swiftness of his fury, his conviction that Sherlock was lying to him, hit Sherlock with the force of a roundhouse kick. All he did was ask for John’s phone number, and John reacted as if God himself tapped him to execute Armageddon. John wouldn’t trust Sherlock to tell him the color of the sky, and this time they’re texting because John prefers it.

The simple meal wasn’t forgiveness. John would provide food, shelter, and medical care to a terrorist, then, if ordered, he’d strap that individual to a gurney destined for the death chamber. Remember that about John Watson.

Nevertheless, he texts Mycroft.

Thank you. SH

You’re welcome. Is all well? MH

No. SH

Ah. MH

He’s going to let me see him again. SH

Sherlock’s nearly back to his flat when his phone buzzes again.

It’s a start. MH  
  
+  
  
The next morning Sherlock gets up, showers, dresses in clean clothes, and sets about straightening his flat. The setting is ripe for John the Savior to rush in and restore Sherlock to health and well-being. He prepares to defend against that, because John should not have to save him. His life may be in ruins, but he will rebuild it himself. He will have something more than brilliance and beauty to offer John.

What does John need?

A friend. The signs that John’s largely alone are obvious. His flat lacked even rudimentary decorative touches, his fridge containing milk for tea, the frittata, prepackaged salad and little else. The cupboard held four plates, four bowls, four glasses. It’s unlikely he’s entertaining  friends, old or new, in that sterile place.

It exhausts him, gathering newspapers and recycling them, changing his bed, removing months of dust from flat surfaces. Emotions cannot be switched off and on like machines, and little happened at John’s flat to give him reason to hope. But they cannot go back to the way they were before, and Sherlock will have a tidy flat to offer when John contacts him.

But that is not what happens.

John doesn’t contact him at all.  
  
+  
  
Dinner? SH  
  
  
John walks into the restaurant promptly at seven, slipping his phone in his pocket as he crosses the dining room. He’s wearing a tie, jacket, and slacks, so he’s come from work. His face is reddened from the cold wind, so he arrived early but stood outside in the winter air surfing the internet until it was time rather than talking to Sherlock. John joins Sherlock at the quiet table in the back corner, opens the menu, skims the offerings, then closes it again.

“I’m going to say this once. Don’t lie. Because if I find out you’ve lied to me again, about anything up to and including the sodding temperature in degrees C, we’re through.”

“Yes. Of course,” Sherlock agrees.

The waiter runs through the specials, then takes their order. John declines wine, and the server disappears.

John’s gaze searches Sherlock’s. “Where the hell have you been?”

Relief swamps him. Swept up in the sheer rightness of the situation, in the utter delight of John watching him and _it’s fine, fine, it’s all fine_ , he talks faster and faster, detailing the early stages of his journey into the global criminal underworld, until —

“Then, when I saw you at the cemetery, I knew why the terror cells were — “

His voice cuts off abruptly, because John’s face has gone from stony to seething. He’s made a mistake. John did not know Sherlock was watching him.

_You **idiot.**_

Before Sherlock can recover, John gets to his feet, drops his napkin on his chair, and walks out of the restaurant.

That’s it, then.

But…John stops just outside the door. Sherlock watches through the large front windows as John puts his hands on his hips, and breathes in the same slow exhales and deep inhales he uses to get himself back under control after a nightmare. The process continues for over a minute while passersby slow to stare and John steadfastly ignores them. Then he sets his shoulders, walks back into the restaurant, plucks his napkin from his chair, and sits down.

“I’m sorry. That was thoughtless,” Sherlock says before John can speak.

John’s glare is a punch, but one pulled at the last possible moment. “Yes, it bloody well was.”

“You told me not to lie to you.”

Elbows on the white linen tablecloth, John’s head drops into his hands. The tips of his fingers whiten as he grips his skull through short strands that are now as much silver as blonde. “Yes, I bloody well did,” he says to the plate.

“Nevertheless, I caused you pain. I’m sorry.”

Hands still clutching his head, John peers up at him, his eyes searching Sherlock’s face for God only knows what. Authenticity, perhaps, and Sherlock learns a new fear: that what he feels is unclear to others. Because he understands John’s pain, at least a portion of it, and he is sorry, and words suddenly seem utterly inadequate.

“Did you watch me any other time?”

Lying is absolutely the right thing to do here, and at the same time absolutely the wrong thing to do. “The five times I was back in London.”

“You bloody bas— .”

Sherlock knows what was about to happen, and he’s earned it. “You can call me names, John.”

“I can’t, actually,” John says, his eyes as bleak as a frozen lake. “Want to know why?”

No. This is too hard. Dealing with his own emotions overwhelms him. Handling John’s in addition to his own is beyond him, and yet… “Yes.”

“I spent years thinking you’d gone to your grave with me calling you a dick one of the last things you heard me say.”

Sherlock physically recoils from the implication. This is not fine. They might not ever be fine again.

“Mycroft also sent me pictures of you on CCTV,” Sherlock admitted. Might as well come clean with the worst of what he’d done. “That time when the Syrian hitmen had you at gunpoint. How did you convince them to let you leave?”

John looks at him like he’s a particularly vile piece of refuse dredged from the bottom of the Thames. “I asked them if I looked like you were alive.”

“Oh.”

“Your plan worked. They were terrified. They knew someone was on to them. I thought it was because of Mycroft, but it was actually you.”

Sherlock bites off the flow of words detailing all the intricacies of the pursuit that led up to that particular interaction. Now is not the time. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? _Why?_ You’d left. Why watch me?”

“When I did I felt like _you_ were still watching _me_. I needed that. I needed to know…”

His voice cuts off abruptly, because the end of that sentence is obvious. _I needed to know you were alive._ This should have been a good thing. He needed to know John was alive because he loved John, but he didn’t know he loved John, and he left, _he left him here_ , alone in his grief. But John’s face is ravaged, and only after following John into the grief can Sherlock understand even a fraction of what he’s done.

“So you took it from me. Even when you were gone, you took from me.”

His voice is so quiet it’s terrifying. Sherlock waits for it all to be over again.

Hands still clutching his head, John breathes deep, and reaches inside for something Sherlock can’t identify. Patience, perhaps. Fortitude. Or the words to gut Sherlock.

“Sherlock. How do you think this makes me feel?”

The question is delivered in the tone usually reserved for mums asking small children what the cow says. Four months ago Sherlock would have bristled, and refused to answer that question. Four months ago he would have told John to stop being so dull, so pedestrian. Now he knows he has to get this right, or once again, they are over. He chooses his words very, very carefully. “I used you. I egregiously manipulated you and your love to further my own ends. I took you for granted. So, I imagine hearing what I did while you were grieving me is like acid in the wound of my deception. I imagine it is intolerable.”

“Yep. That’s about right.”

John doesn’t leave but their food is arriving so perhaps that’s why. Perhaps he just wanted to make Sherlock admit to his grievous sin. They eat perfunctorily, without conversation, and neither of them takes more than a few bites. John declines coffee and dessert, thanks Sherlock because that’s who John Watson is, then pleads an early morning at the surgery. After he leaves Sherlock tips his phone from corner to corner while the server processes his credit card.

That was a disaster.  
  
+  
  
Once again there are no texts from John. Sherlock lets a few days pass, rethinks his strategy. Clearly they are not going to pick up where they left off; they are not going to pick up on the same continent where they left off. He remembers Molly tentatively asking him to coffee the day he met John. He could do with the practice.  

He waits for Molly outside Barts, across the street from bit of pavement where the body landed after he fell. He’s not seen her since the head of security for Barts called to personally explain the consequences should Sherlock ignore the property ban, using words like _perp walk, handcuffs, charges pressed to the fullest extent of the law_. “Hello, Molly.”

“Sherlock!” She gives him a quick, awkward hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I wondered if you’d like to get a coffee?”

Her smile falters. “Oh. On a case, are you? I was on my way home, but I can… Black with two sugars?”

“I’m not on a case. I meant with me. At a shop.”

She does. She’s carrying six different totes, and at any given time one is slipping from a shoulder or elbow. In the coffee shop she’s nervous and flustered and fidgety, but she talks. And talks. Her mum, her cats, the man she’s dating. It’s inane, and crashingly dull, but it matters to Molly, and that seems to be the point.  

“This was nice,” Molly says, giving him a quick smile. “Thanks.”

The list of people he’s offended, angered, humiliated, or enraged is long, but Molly’s name is at the top. Begin as you mean to go on. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“What?” she asked, looking around for whatever catastrophe he’s caused. “For what?”

“Christmas. When you brought me a present and I deduced how you felt about me in front of everyone. I humiliated you and it was unkind. I was showing off. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

Because that’s what people say, and this time he means it.

Her eyes widen. “Oh. That,” she says. “It’s all right. It really is.”

It isn’t. She’s lying to make him feel better, and he’s grateful. “I’m also sorry I asked you to get me a body and deceive everyone for years.”

Her eyes cloud over and her smile falters. “I didn’t know it would be so hard. But I did it, and I’m glad,” she says stoutly. “You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t.”

He nods. Asking for forgiveness may lift a weight, but it brings back memories he’d rather not experience yet again. Except there’s no other way to repair the damage.

“Why did you invite me out?” she asks. “I know it’s not for me.”

“I had dinner with John. It was a disaster. I was a disaster.”

Awareness dawns, and she looks around the coffee shop with new eyes. “You want me to help you practice being normal.”

“An unachievable end state,” Sherlock says. Grief didn’t fundamentally alter his brain and intellect, or surgically transplant an entirely new personality in place of his old one. He can’t expect John to teach him, so he will learn, for John. “Help me be a better version of me.”

Molly plays with one of the bows on her sweater. Rather belatedly it occurs to Sherlock that asking infatuated Molly to help him get John back might fall in the _bit not good_ category, but she just smiles a rather sad smile, and nods. “Let’s do this again.”

Excellent. “Tomorrow at four,” Sherlock says.

“Wrong,” Molly carols. “You don’t state it like fact. You ask.”

He grinds his teeth. “Molly, would you like to get a coffee tomorrow at four?”

“I can’t. I’m working,” she says with a delighted clap of her hands.

Getting a bit of her own back, was she? “You’re enjoying this.”

“I am,” she says, smiling. “I really, really am. I can’t do tomorrow, but I could do Friday lunch.”

He nods. On Friday he asks about her cats, about family members, about work. As expected, no change in status since Tuesday, so he proceeds with more interesting conversation. She interrupts a ten minute monologue on the recent developments in genetically modified food to gently remind him that a couple of minutes was the limit without allowing the other person to interject, or ask a question, or change the subject. She then grades his overall performance far more gently than he’s ever treated her.

“Oh, and no deducing,” she finishes.

“It’s efficient. For example, if I know you always have a soy latte with two shots of vanilla and a shortbread biscuit, I can remember that and order ahead.” It’s thoughtful. Right?

“Ask, Sherlock,” she says gently. “People like to be asked.”

So he should not have ordered an entire meal for Sarah Sawyer, and perhaps he should have asked John basic questions like _How are you?_. He nods.

She considers him. “You should give this a go with Lestrade, too. Men have different conversations than women.”  
  
+  
  
He doesn’t need Lestrade. Two coffee dates should be sufficient to master the basics. The principles aren’t complicated, and John once again hasn’t texted.  
  
How hard can it be?  
  
Coffee? SH  
  
+  
  
John holds open the coffee shop door for a woman leaving with her son. He immediately sees Sherlock sitting at a table in the corner. He has a cup in front of him, and gives John a relaxed nod.

John bristles but keeps a lid on his temper as he orders a latte and a sandwich. He worked through lunch catching up on patient notes, and he’s hungry. Dealing with Sherlock on an empty stomach was a bad idea before the fall, but he refused to send his nurse out for a sandwich just to make sure he was at his best for the man who…for Sherlock.

Out of the corner of his eye he watches Sherlock watch him while the espresso machine steams and the barista hands him his toasted cheese sandwich. Sherlock looks better. Still achingly thin, but washed, hair trimmed, and less…drowned. John’s not sure why he said yes to coffee. Dinner was a fiasco, and he has no reason to suspect this stretch of time in which beverages are consumed in each other’s presence will go any better.

But he has things he wants to know. At night, when he remembers Sherlock on his knees, grey-white and nearly crushed by the weight of water, he wants to know why.

“We could have had lunch,” Sherlock says when he joins him.

John realises he’s angled himself away from Sherlock, shifts to avoid giving anything else away, remembers who he’s sitting with, and settles back into his original position. “This is fine,” he says, and bites into the cheese sandwich. “Why did you do it? Why did you go into the grief?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow, as they do when data lies outside his predicted pattern, then considers this before answering. “You were my friend. My only friend. I’d lost you. I grieved.”

“You decided to do it. Like an experiment.”

There’s an even longer pause before Sherlock answers. John can tell he’s thinking through his answer. “Initially, yes.”

John has a hard time swallowing his mouthful of crispy baguette and melted cheese.

“You said don’t lie,” Sherlock hurries. “So yes, it was an experiment. Then it wasn’t. Then it was real.”

He can just imagine it, Sherlock deciding to throw open all the doors locking away unnecessary things like affection, emotions, love, then drowning under the weight of it all. “And?”

The pauses between Sherlock’s answers grow longer with each question. “I was no longer able to bury what I felt,” he says finally.

_Did you mean it?_ hovers in the air between them, but John’s not ready to go there. “Why? It’s grief. It’s devastating. It’s not like…shaving your head to show solidarity for a friend with cancer.”

To John’s amusement, Sherlock looks vaguely appalled by the thought before he transfers his gaze to the passersby on the street. “I did not understand what I had done. I found I couldn’t bear to not understand. Then I found I couldn’t bear what I’d done. But you had.” He looked at John. “You used to say it was your job to take risks with me. To survive with me. I wanted to survive with you.”

John once again finds the cheese sandwich resisting relocation to his stomach; this time the lump in his throat impedes the progress. “But you didn’t. You didn’t survive _with_ me.”

“I know.”

“It was always real for me. It was never-ending grief. I can’t delete it. It’s carved into me somehow. And the betrayal. You used me. You used me unconscionably to further your own ends. Friends don’t do that to each other.” His throat works. “Lovers don’t do that to each other.”

Of course Sherlock used him. It’s what he did. He was Sherlock. He used people to get what he wanted. John knew this. John regularly told him off for doing it, to no avail.

“I know,” Sherlock admits. “Even knowing you were alive, the last four months were…intolerable. I am sorry.”

“Can you walk away from those months as easily as you walked into them?”

“It wasn’t easy, John.”

It’s John’s turn to blink, then he looks at Sherlock, really looks at him. Sherlock’s face is worn. There’s something different around the eyes, the mouth, something John hasn’t seen before. He’s seen brilliance, but this isn’t brilliance. It might be wisdom, paid for, as it always is, with pain.

“Nor would I wish them away.”

John finds he can’t respond to that. Steam rises from the cup nestled in his curled fingers. He sips his coffee, looks out the window. A woman peers at them over her green-rimmed glasses, then points her mobile in their direction. Expressionless, John reaches for the cord controlling the coffee shop’s shades and lowers it.

“We are still news,” Sherlock muses.

“I’m not,” John says.

“I’m not either,” Sherlock says.

“But we are.” He’s not happy about it, either. Once, just once, he’d like a little privacy to deal with all things Sherlock.

“I told them you and I had ended our partnership when I disappeared,” Sherlock offers.

“It’s the tabloids. They had to have a go.”

“You stopped blogging.”

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” John said matter-of-factly. “I hated the thought that people knew anything about me. I thought I couldn’t feel any more alone than I did after I saw you fall. Then total strangers came up to me on the street and commiserated. We were all fooled, they said. I told them they were wrong, that I wasn’t fooled, that Moriarty tricked them, not me. I knew who I was, who you were, what we had. I defended you. Us.”

“I’m sorry.”

Anger flares hot and fierce, burning away John’s appetite. He flattens the sandwich in its paper wrapper, then leans forward and thumps his finger on the table for emphasis. “I told you I loved you. You were _inside me_ — “

_lips to lips Sherlock’s thumb at his temple the thud of Sherlock’s pulse in that throat pleasure from one end of the night to the other his heart racing throat tight IloveyouIloveyouGodIloveyou_

“ — and I said _I love you_.”

“I’m sorry.” Light plays upon his eyes like light on the surface of a pool. Silver _sorrow_ blue _regret_ gray _shame_ green _fear_.

“It’s not enough to apologize.” John tries to lower his voice, but people are starting to stare. There’s so much emotion inside him, and Sherlock…God, Sherlock is Sherlock. His heart thuds hard every time he makes eye contact with him, and then his stomach lurches, and he _remembers_. “Apologies can’t fix this. They can’t. You have to stop hurting then apologizing. You run a tab no one can pay, and it’s not just with other people. It’s with yourself, too, and when it comes due — ”

He stops. It’s not his job to fix Sherlock, or smooth his way anymore.

“I am aware of that,” Sherlock says. Unlike John, his voice is very quiet, almost indistinguishable from the low hum of voices, machinery, lorries on the street. “Very, very aware, John. I’m trying.”

John can’t take any more. “I have to go.”

He jerks into his coat as he shoulders through the door, leaving Sherlock behind once more.  
  
+  
  
Apparently having coffee with your former lover is quite complicated when one factors in a faked suicide and two years of grief.

+  
  
Pub? SH  
  
Lestrade subjects Sherlock to an excruciating twenty-five minute discussion about football, leagues and players’ injuries and the current standings, subjects so utterly irrelevant to the roiling sea of emotion inside Sherlock that his jaw and shoulders ache when they part ways. Molly explains that men are generally bad listeners and also emotionally brain-dead, which gives Sherlock a new appreciation for John, who listened for hours on end while Sherlock talked about anything and everything. Determined to practice, he tries again with Lestrade, this time at dinner. He’s well enough to read the papers again, entertaining himself by hacking into the Yard’s database, pestering Mycroft for classified information, which he provides only after Sherlock’s successful attempts to penetrate both the MI5 and MI6 databases bring armed men to his flat. There’s something big beginning to coalesce, a string of murdered young Eastern European women, emaciated and abused, with signs of repeated abortions and rapes. They are young, and no one reports them missing. Classic human trafficking.

“I can take a look at the bodies, if you like,” Sherlock says to Lestrade. He worked on a similar syndicate while snipping the strands of Moriarty’s web.

“Can’t do it,” Lestrade says.

“I…spent time in Iran, Uzbekistan, Russia, and the Ukraine.”

Lestrade’s gaze sharpens. “Did you now? Quite the holiday you took while you were dead.”

Sherlock nods.

“I can’t do it.”

“Then take me to the docks where you found the bodies.” Shipping containers and boats are the most common method of bringing people into the country unseen. They might have died on the trip over and floated to shore on the tide, or been dumped there. He needs data if he’s to work this case.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Sherlock bites down hard on what Molly would call badgering, pestering, and annoying. “How’s your wife?”

Lestrade gives him an amused smile. “I’ve known you for almost a decade. You never ask about the trouble and strife. You didn’t know my first name until that case in Dartmoor.”

He grits his teeth at this bollocksing of his research. “Just answer the question.”

“She’s fine. Why?”

“I’m attempting to learn the algorithms of conversational discourse.”

Lestrade just goggles at him. Exposed, humiliated, and stymied from The Work, Sherlock snaps, “Come on, man! Think!”

The light dawns almost as slowly as the sun rises. “How is John?”

“He’s also fine,” Sherlock says. The eruption of emotion recedes, leaving him hollowed out. John is fine. John has a job and an apartment and a life without Sherlock. It’s Sherlock who is less than fine.

“Seen him lately?”

“We’ve had dinner, and coffee.”

“And?”

“The end results were unsatisfactory.”

Lestrade’s expression is hard to read. Sherlock knows that Lestrade’s loyalties are divided. He’s worked with Sherlock for over a decade, but Lestrade likes John, and had to watch him disintegrate during Sherlock’s absence. Based on the suddenly expressionless look on his face, he’s thinking carefully about his allegiances. “What do you want? You want him to work with you again? You want him to move back in?”

“I want to be his friend.”

“Why?”

The answer to that question would take hours to explicate, so Sherlock settles for the concise version. “Because he was mine, and I failed him.”

Lestrade’s lined face relaxes, so somehow he’s managed to say the right thing, to indicate how he wants to give something to John, not take something from him. “How’s that going?”

“As well as you might presume given that we were lovers and I let him think I was dead for over two years. I lied to him. I watched him mourn me, and did not stop to count the price he paid.”

“Par for the course with you,” Lestrade says, magnificently unconcerned. “John knows who you are. Give it time.” He finishes his pint and signals for the check. “Want to take a look at some cold cases?”

Interesting. Confirmation that behaving kindly towards others helps smooth one’s own way, and not just with John. Sherlock considers the offer. In the past he’s refused. They’re cold for a reason, chilled by time, faltering memories, obliterating of evidence, and usually drenched in human emotion. They’re not solved by brilliant flashes of insight. They’re solved through patient legwork, dogged determination, and more luck than he likes. “You’re letting me work on these because no one can accuse me of committing the crimes,” he says.

Lestrade doesn’t deny it. “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

They swing by the Yard. Lestrade leads him into a dimly lit basement storage room and hands him a stack of files so old they haven’t been computerized. The reports for two are printed on the green-and-white striped paper from the dot matrix era. They smell of dust and bitter coffee and despair and failure.

It’s something to do, something that might redeem him.   

“The docks?” he asks as Lestrade escorts him out.

“You’ll go without me, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock muses.

“Tomorrow morning. Early.”

Lestrade turns toward the parking garage, but Sherlock stops him. "Lestrade." Shame creeps up his spine to swell at the base of his neck, sending an unfamiliar heat into his face, but he has begun and he means to go on. "Is everything...with your wife...financially, is your family...that is to say, has she been able to quit her job?"

Lestrade stares at him for several second, his dark eyes so astonished Sherlock writhes inside. "Yeah. We're good."

"I'm sorry," Sherlock says quietly. "Can I help in any way? I can help. I will. I am responsible for -- "

"We're fine," Lestrade says more firmly. Then he smiles. "Let it go, mate. I have."

+

Initially, forgiveness feels as intense as shame, prickly and hot and teary. Except, when it recedes, it leaves him a little more whole than he was before.  
  
+  
  
Coffee? SH

John’s reply comes sixty-one hours later.

Saturday afternoon.

Where? SH  
  
John’s suggested location is inconvenient, and his time will prevent Sherlock from beginning a tricky all day experiment. He agrees anyway.  
  
It goes better. John is still stiff and jerky in his movements. His gaze skims Sherlock’s face, flicks at it, never lingers. Sherlock asks a few questions, gets terse answers, but John’s manners are good. He asks if Sherlock’s working. Sherlock mentions the cold cases without going into detail, opting instead for a funny story. He knows John will find it funny because a) Sherlock’s the one who ended up flat on his back in a slick of fish guts discarded by casual fishermen who didn’t want a mess in their houses and b) Lestrade and the half-wits working down the Tilbury docks nearly pissed themselves laughing at him. He tells John, and while John doesn’t gift him with his delightful high-pitched giggle, Sherlock does get a snort that nearly sends coffee out of John’s nose.

End on a high note. He looks at his phone. “Thanks for meeting me, John, but you should go,” he says casually. “You’ll be late for your appointment.”

That gets him John’s full attention. “I didn’t say I had an appointment.”

The high note tumbles down several octaves into the sound his violin would make in the hands of a three year old, were he stupid enough to hand a toddler his Strad. According to Molly, rule number one of a coffee date is no deducing. Expecting him not to deduce is like expecting him not to breathe. Expecting him to keep his conclusions to himself, however, is reasonable, and he’s already cocked that up. “A guess.”

“You don’t guess.” John bares his teeth. “And you don’t lie to me anymore.”

Words tumble from Sherlock’s lips like someone’s put a gun to John’s head. “We met at two in a place inconvenient for both Westminster and you. You’ve been looking at your phone, checking the time, which could mean you’re bored and waiting for a socially acceptable length of time to pass before you make your excuses, but that was an amusing anecdote and there are no other indications of boredom. Discomfort, perhaps, but certainly understandable given our circumstances but not terminal, and certainly not boredom. You agreed to meet me but with a convenient excuse if you wanted to leave.”

John purses his lips. “Who am I seeing?”

“Your therapist. You’d stopped while I was gone. Now you’re seeing her again.”

John looks at him for a long moment. “You’re still in there, aren’t you?”

The blunt grey words are tinged every so palely with a very familiar fond exasperation, and he’s promised John he won’t lie to him again.  
“Yes,” he admits.

“Good,” John says, and gets to his feet. “Goodbye.”

Good.

John said _good_ , not _piss off_ or _freak_ or _dick_ or _that’s a shame I was just beginning to like the new you_. He said _good_.

What does it mean?

Sherlock’s never spent so much time contemplating a single syllable in his entire life.  
  
+  
  
A week later John finds himself at work, his phone in his hand, composing a text to Sherlock before he remembers he’s furious with the man. When he does, he considers all the possible implications of sending this text. He nearly deletes it. Instead, he hits send, because he’s bored at work, and really, _really_ wants to know.

Were you wearing the Belstaff when you slipped at the docks?

The answer comes before he finishes his notes in a patient’s file.

Of course. SH

The scene plays out in his head, and John quirks a smile. He’s been to the Tilbury docks with Lestrade and Sherlock. He can see it, smell it, and it makes his day a little less routine.

His phone vibrates again in the pocket of his white coat, interrupting a rather tedious recitation of bunion pain. John feels the familiar surge of heightened anticipation, but forces himself to wait until the patient has left clutching a prescription for anti-inflammatories and a referral to an orthopaedist.

It’s remarkably difficult to get the stench of fish out of thirteen hundred quid of waterproof wool. SH

This time John huffs out something like a laugh. He slips his phone in his jacket pocket and spends the rest of his shift contemplating first world problems, and what's possible with a Sherlock willing to mock himself.


	8. Pair of Forgivers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John’s arse over tea kettle down the slick-as-ice slope that is Sherlock Holmes, and gaining speed.

In between the sports page of the London Times and adding films to his Netflix queue John skims through the NHS jobs website. It’s a habit, developed immediately after Sherlock’s resurrection. He doesn’t _dislike_ his current job, is glad to have it, but he occasionally finds himself restless, wanting more than head colds, sprains, and repetitive motion injuries. Usually it’s a quick skim, then on to his email. But today there is a job at the London Veterans’ Assessment and Treatment Services working with veterans having difficulty adjusting to civilian life. John looks at the advert. They’re seeking a highly motivated doctor to complement the work of the existing speciality physicians to provide assessment and continuing care to patients.

John knows these patients. He knows what it’s like to carry a pack for miles through the Afghan countryside, admiring the beauty with one eye and on the lookout for Taliban snipers and land mines with the other. He knows how they sleep (not well), what they eat (a diet so low in fiber and fresh fruits and vegetables it would cause constipation in the most regular of individuals), what they miss about home (regular sex, beer, porn, solitude), and what they’ll miss when they get home (their fellow soldiers and Royal Marines, the adrenaline rush, the sense that they mattered).

This is the work he wanted to do when he invalided out of the Army.

Islington is on the same side of the city as Dagenham, but getting there on the Tube is nearly impossible. If he got the job, he’d likely have to move.

_Westminster’s closer, an easier commute to and from home_ , the little voice in his head reminds him. Because 221 Baker Street still comes to mind when he thinks of home. Not Dagenham. Not Edinburgh. Westminster. But he doesn’t live there anymore.

The job would be closer to Sher — all he left behind. He scrolls through the advert again, uncertain. His mind’s peregrinations make him wonder if the job intrigues him, or if the black-winged, terrible beauty of the heartbreakingly impossible is circling back for him once again. Afghanistan. Sherlock. He’s a terrible judge of the possible, the sane, the typical. Working with traumatised veterans strains the most placid professional; even the mundane aspects of the job will push every button John has, could trigger his nightmares, the tremor, his leg.

He used to know himself. He used to follow his instincts with confidence. Troubled, he updates his CV, composes the application email, but saves it to his Drafts folder, then gets ready for bed. A text awaits him before he shuts off the lights for the night.  
  
Coffee? SH  
  
There’s another habit he can’t seem to shake. It’s almost a standing date, coffee with Sherlock before he sees Ella. He can manage seeing Sherlock for an hour or two, and if things go awry, well, he’s seeing Ella right afterwards. A couple of times he’s said no to Sherlock’s diffident question, just on principle. He’s regretted it afterwards, spent the afternoon out of sorts, spoken truculently to Ella.  
  
Yes.  
  
Same time and place? SH  
  
Uncertain, John swipes his thumb across the screen before replying.  
  
Yes.  
  
+  
  
“You cleared yet?”

John’s question has become a small joke. A very, very small one. The Yard has finally, albeit grudgingly, hastened the pace of their investigation into what led to Sherlock’s dramatic fall from the roof of Barts. Sherlock senses Lestrade’s hand in this, and responds by keeping scrupulously quiet about the stack of cold case files in his flat on Montague Street and his investigations into the human trafficking ring.

“Not yet,” Sherlock replies. John’s having tea today, with a couple of biscuits. He’s slept well the last few nights, then. A bad stretch means the bags under John’s eyes double up and he orders espresso, even in the late afternoon. It’s a vicious cycle, coffee and sleeplessness, but Sherlock keeps that to himself because John knows how caffeine affects the human nervous system, and he’s given no indication he’d welcome Sherlock’s attentiveness to his health.

Sherlock asks after Harry (still sober), John’s parents (still in Edinburgh), his work (still dull). John does not ask after Mycroft. Sherlock brought him up once and watched a brick flush creep into John’s face that suggested Mycroft should fuck right off and die. Mycroft pulled strings and negotiated access to a government lab, so Sherlock sticks to experiments, some of which are complicated enough to flummox John. The next week John had brushed up on the relevant chemistry, which touched Sherlock.

The conversation limps along, but for the moment, sitting with John, watching people come and go is enough.

 A woman in the shop makes eye contact with John, and while John doesn’t smile back, he does take a second look. It’s an automatic response, one Sherlock dismissed before he fell because John quite clearly belonged to him, but now the smiles and sidelong glances make his heart sink.

“She’s flirting,” Sherlock observes dispassionately. John’s bisexual, not wearing a ring, and he’s clearly having coffee with an acquaintance. It’s in his body language, in the way he sits, the way he lets his gaze drift from Sherlock. John is heartbreakingly beautiful when one stops and looks at his weathered, harrowed face. He’s small, strong, deep, all stemming from his intense vulnerability. Next to him, Sherlock feels shallow, untouched. Pretty. Which isn’t much when one sits next to the physical embodiment of wholehearted.

“The more I broke the more women I could pull. Not sure why.”

“You pulled women.”

“Of course I did.” John’s looking out the window, not paying attention to the flow of the conversation that’s arrested Sherlock’s attention so completely. “It was almost as bad as it was before I left for Afghanistan. I’d go weeks without, then every night, twice a night if I could manage it. Classic avoidance tactic. Sarah for a few months before she figured out I wasn’t getting over you. After what I’ve done to her I’m lucky we’re still on speaking terms. I…regret that. Since then it’s been mostly anonymous blokes from the club. Men don’t try to make it all better. They just want to fuck.”

Sherlock’s coffee crawls hot and sour up his throat, then sloshes into the back of his mouth. He shakes his head, a quick, abortive jerk, then sets his cup down and swallows. Hard.  

A friend would say, “Well done, you.” Or something similarly congratulatory at John’s successful testosterone-driven sexual encounters with strangers Sherlock suddenly discovers he _hates_ and would _maim_ , or perhaps _kill_ , if given the chance.

_That is wrong._

“Well done,” he manages. The phrase scours his throat like broken glass.

Which gets John’s attention. John’s face wars with itself: shock at Sherlock’s response, followed immediately by comprehension of Sherlock’s utter ignorance, then pleasure at having hurt Sherlock, then shame for that petty feeling, then regret for the sorry state they’re in. It’s the regret that sets the shifting lines and creases on his face. “Sherlock. I thought you were _dead_.”

John’s not justifying or explaining. He’s stating fact. And Sherlock’s an idiot. Did he really believe John, who inhabited his body and his emotions in every possible way, wouldn’t fuck anyone for _years_? Throw his sexuality on the pyre of their relationship, the one Sherlock gleefully doused with petrol and lit himself?

Yes.

How did he not know this?

Because he’s still self-centered, superficial, and stupid.

This time he’s the one to bolt. “I have…there’s an experiment…Lestrade…I have to go.”

“All right,” John says quietly.

Sherlock’s striding down the pavement _away get away_ before he realizes he’s missed a key point. He didn’t know because Mycroft didn’t tell him.

Mycroft surely knew. Mycroft, with his CCTV cameras and his surveillance teams and his fingers in every pie in the British empire. Mycroft knew, and didn’t tell him.

He’s at the door to the Diogenes Club before he knows what he’s doing.

“Ah. Sherlock. To what do I owe — ”  
“You _knew_.”

Mycroft is measurably (and unfairly) smarter than Sherlock, so he can deduce from Sherlock’s face what he means. He’s also far too smart to lie. “Yes.”

The rage inside him feels familiar. He’s seen it before, which helps him recognize it in himself. What is it? Oh, yes. It feels like… _you fucking selfish machine_. “You didn’t _tell me_.”

“No.”

There isn’t the slightest hint of regret on his brother’s face. “Because if I knew I might get distracted. Leave the job undone.”

“You needed him focused on you,” Mycroft agrees.

He might be crying. It’s a cold, damp day, and he walked rather than take a cab, so the hot tears on his face might be from the brisk wind.

“And because even as you were before, this information would hurt you. I wanted to spare you that, for as long as I could.”

No wonder Mycroft pestered John after Sherlock fell apart. Mycroft knew how he felt about John. Was Sherlock the only one not to see it, know it’s weight and heft and preciousness?

_Yes._

Sherlock turns to walk away.

“We were too close to total victory, which is a rare thing in our line of work.”

  
“We?” Sherlock snarls as he spins to face Mycroft, illuminated by the light spilling from the open door to the club. “ _Victory?_ ”

It’s unfair. He knows it. Hindsight and all that. He can’t blame Mycroft for using Sherlock as he was so willing to be used. But Mycroft is a safe target. Always has been. And Sherlock’s in no mood to debate the price paid for winning a major battle in the Sisyphean war against evil. The war had to be fought, there was always a price, but he could minimise his costs.

If he got the chance. Oh God. What if he didn’t?

“I’m sorry, Sherlock.”

His hand is fisted in his hair as he walks away.

John once said it was all fine. This is not fine. It’s not even in the vicinity of fine.

John’s text arrives as Sherlock walks through the front door to his flat.

I’m sorry.

You have nothing to be sorry for. I lie in a bed very much of my own making. SH

I’m not apologising. I’m commiserating.

_Empathy (n): The ability to understand and share the feelings of another._

The man formerly self-identified as a high-functioning sociopath considers this for a long moment. They are in this together, oh yes they are, like soldiers, like new mothers, like exhausted residents in hospital. They are refugees walking the scorched earth of Sherlock’s war. But despite what Sherlock’s done, John is incapable of anything less than empathy. Perhaps he deduced Mycroft’s sleight of hand right along with Sherlock. John has learnt to assume the worst of the Holmes brothers.

Sherlock is staring at his phone, trying to construct a chemical formula complex enough to eradicate the image of another man inside John, moving over John, stroking his cock, kissing that miracle of a mouth as he shudders and gasps and comes, when another text arrives.

I can’t find an emoticon that conveys empathy. Second best:

The text stream ends with two yellow bubbles sporting not smiles but rather enraged snarls as they bounce gently, fat white-gloved digits extended in the two-fingered salute. Against all sense and reason, Sherlock laughs. It’s a short bark that holds not the slightest hint of amusement, and startles a neighbor down the street walking her corgi.

_Fuck the world_ , the emoticon says. _Fuck the fucking world and everything fucking thing it fucking throws at us._

This is not how Sherlock expected _Sherlock and John together again_ to look or feel or behave. But it’s what he has.

Apt. SH

I thought so. Good night.  
  
+  
  
Sherlock rereads the string of messages and wonders if a friendship can grow from bubbles on a screen. Their Saturday afternoon coffee encounters grow less perfunctory, less formal. It’s time to risk dinner again.  
  
Dinner? SH

The answer comes in less than five minutes.

Tired. Eat something.  
  
Empathy aside, apparently dinner is still off the table.  
  
+  
  
O.O  
O.o  
o.O  
o.o  
  
Sherlock, why are you texting me incomprehensible symbols? MH

They’re emoticons. SH  
  
-.-  
>.<  
:)  
;)  
  
Sherlock, I am in a national security meeting with the head of MI6 and the Secretary for Defence. MH  
  
\\./  
:P  
  
Sherlock. Cease and desist. MH

:P SH

Sherlock. MH

Do shut up, Mycroft. SH  
  
+  
  
I’m cleared. SH

Why is this not the headline of every major newspaper in the UK?

The Yard doesn’t feel the need to shout their errors from the rooftops. SH

Not surprised. Congratulations.

Thank you. Dinner? SH

Working late. Eat something.

Sherlock considers bringing a takeaway to John’s surgery, then discards the idea. He’s still a bad risk, but he is learning to be John’s friend. Friends respect boundaries.  
  
+  
  
Dinner? SH

Can’t. Drinks at the pub with a colleague moving to Liverpool. Eat something.

If you do the same. SH

Unlike you, I never forget to eat.

Eat something healthier than fried onion and beer. SH

Later in the evening John texts him a picture of a stir fry with chicken. Sherlock recognizes the kitchen table from his flat in Dagenham. Rather than meet Sherlock John had a drink, one drink only because it’s a work night, likely a pint, then went home to his lonely, badly lit flat in sodding Dagenham to make a meal by himself, then eat.

Without Sherlock.

_Rejection despair humiliation —_

But John texted him the picture. 

— _hope connection contact something you’d do with an acquaintance you wanted to encourage_.

He files away the data, takes a picture of his own simple meal of whole wheat bread and cheese and an apple and texts it back. Protein, complex carbs, and a fruit. John would approve. Then he eats it. It’s sort of like dinner with John. Except it isn’t.  
  
Perhaps coffee to dinner is too big a leap.  
  
+  
  
Lunch? SH  
Tuesday?  
  
Sherlock arrives fifteen minutes late to lunch blown in by the wind, hair in his eyes. The restaurant is crowded, and John is wedged into a corner, his gaze alternating between a menu and his watch. Sherlock removes his scarf and prepares to apologize profusely, but when John sees Sherlock, his stance sharpens immediately. “What’s going on?”

_Nothing_ hovers on his lips until he remembers John’s admonition not to lie. “I’m in the middle of something with Lestrade.”

“You left a case to meet me.”

“We had a d — an arranged time and place to meet and spend time together.”

The wry look John gives him suggests he’s having as difficult a time labeling their encounters as Sherlock is. “What’s the case?”

“Woman found murdered in her home. No signs of forced entry. Obvious signs of a faked burglary.”

John’s eyes light up. “Cause of death?”

“Stab wounds to the chest.”

“Want some company?”

It is the first time John’s offered himself to Sherlock. He’s let Sherlock see him, talk to him, breath in his scent — chai tea and wool jumpers and the clinic’s hand soap —  and watch his expressive face, but he’s never texted first, called first, or initiated _an arranged time and place to meet and spend time together_.

“We’ll never get a table,” John adds with a nod at the packed restaurant.

Sherlock’s heart is pounding under his tight shirt, jacket, and coat, the thuds of a trapped bird beating against his ribcage so sickeningly strong he thinks he might drop to his knees like he did in John’s flat. John’s eyebrows lift ever so slightly. “It’s just a crime scene, Sherlock.”

“Yes. Of course.” Sherlock wraps his scarf around his neck again. “Your opinion would be valuable. Anderson’s on forensics.”

“Still a git?”

“Yes.”

“Still won’t work with you?”

“Yes.”

“The more things change,” John mutters, then follows Sherlock out the door and into a cab.

The old gang, together again. There’s Lestrade, who’s gone totally silver, which inexplicably makes two of the crime scene techs giggle, and Donovan, who’s heavily pregnant. One look at her and John bypasses all the little reunion courtesies to beckon her into the kitchen for a full-on doctor interrogation, asking about swollen ankles and fingers, water retention, salt intake, blood pressure, and whether she should be on her feet ten hours a day. At the word _pre-eclampsia_ Donovan’s face goes pale, and her hand goes to her belly. John shoots Lestrade a narrow-eyed glare as he beckons _him_ over, and Sherlock catches a low mutter of _she refused desk duty_. It ends with Donovan agreeing to see her OB that afternoon and Lestrade promising to be a little more conscientious of a pregnant woman.

“You’ve got kids,” John says in a low voice. “You should know better.”

Lestrade holds up his thumb. “We’re talking about Donovan, yeah?” He adds his index finger and says, “What I know from two pregnancies is to never, ever tell a pregnant woman she looks anything other than great.”

Sherlock files that bit of data away.

“All right,” John concedes. “Good to see you.”

“You, too,” Lestrade says and hands him a pair of latex gloves.

Then there’s Anderson.  

“You’re back?” Anderson says, his voice high and sardonic over the chatter in the room. “After what he did?”

The walls and floor vibrate with a dangerous electrical charge as _goodpatientdoctor_ disappears; in an instant Captain John H. Watson, RAMC, takes up all the air in the room, and London, quite possibly in all of England. Sherlock, examining the family photographs organized on the bookshelves, listens with every cell in his being.

In his peripheral vision he sees Anderson put his hands up in what should be mock surrender but doesn’t quite make the mock. “My mistake.”

The sigh of relief is almost audible. Movement recommences, and Captain Watson becomes John, quiet, stable, small John. He drops to his knees by the body.

“Odd,” he comments when Sherlock crouches beside him. “They’re all clustered directly to her heart. If someone surprised her, wouldn’t the wounds be dispersed as she tried to fight off her attacker?”

“No sign of a break-in,” Lestrade says. “Her sister claims she was here for coffee, then left to go for a run. She’s babysitting the kids now. The officer we sent with her to pick up the kids said she gathered them up like a mother hen with her chicks. The husband’s off making arrangements.”

Sherlock extends an 11x13 montage of professional photographs featuring a small woman cradling an extraordinarily fat bulldog. The same woman appears on the periphery of the many, many family vacation photographs, never with a significant other. The dead woman’s photographs, by contrast, feature a growing brood of young children and her adoring husband. “Her sister,” Sherlock says quietly.

John looks at the body, then at the pictures. “Symbolically cutting out her heart?” he said. “Wanted what her sister had?”

Lestrade dispatches a car to pick up the sister for additional questioning. When they leave, John says, “What a prat.”

Sherlock knows who he means. “He’s asking a legitimate question,” he observes dispassionately.

“It’s not his question to ask,” John says huffily.

Sherlock looks out the window at London passing by, and smiles.  
  
+  
  
Could use your help. SH

At work. Ask Anderson.

Very funny. Likely to fracture hyoid bone by hanging? SH

Possible, yes. Likely, no. Depends.

It’s not common in hanging. More likely via strangulation.

Sherlock, answer your phone.

Straight drop or did the body pitch forward?

Sorry, was in sewers. SH

Why?

Don’t answer that. Did the body fall at an angle?

Straight drop. SH

Not likely then. More likely to fracture cervical spine between C2-3 or C4-5. Other than strangulation it’s not a common injury anymore.

Marks wrong for strangulation. Was it common? SH

Used to be in bare knuckle boxing. Hard punch to the throat fractured the hyoid. Victim died.

More common these days at martial arts tournaments. Kids horsing around without protective gear. Rarely fatal because the bone hasn’t ossified completely but scares the hell out of their parents.

John, you’re a genius. SH

I’m a physician with the NHS who treats adolescents.

Genius. SH

Don’t overdo it.

  
John slips his mobile into his pocket. He’s not a genius, but he’s applying for that job at the Veterans’ Assessment Center as soon as he gets off work. It’s just an application. Odds are good he won’t be contacted for an interview.  
  
  
“She wasn’t depressed,” Sherlock announces to Lestrade, who is trying in vain to remove a layer of noxious sludge from the tread of his shoes. “She withdrew because she was afraid. Talk to the hapkido studio owner again, the one dealing steroids out of his office you said emphatically stated he didn’t fancy her.”

Lestrade’s brow furrows as he stares at him, then tosses the wad of filthy napkins at the bin. “We interviewed him. He has an alibi.”

“He’s lying. You should have taken me to the interview.”

Lestrade doesn’t deny it. “You pulled all of that out of a trip into the sewers.”

Sherlock holds out his phone, the screen containing the string of texts with John.

“Ah,” Lestrade says. “Good man, John Watson. A good man.”

“I didn’t see,” Sherlock says quietly, running thumb over the screen. “I observed, but I didn’t see.”

Lestrade may or may not understand what Sherlock means. Sherlock didn’t understand it himself until recently, but when it comes to this, he’s the idiot. He observed the particulars about John Watson — his fidelity, his heart, his strength of will, his compassion — but he didn’t see the whole man, much less cherish what John freely offered. Sarah Sawyer was right. He didn’t know what he had. He observed what he could use, and was blind to what he had.

“You’re going to just bin those shoes, aren’t you?”

Sherlock looks at his feet as if seeing them for the first time. They’re saturated with what goes down drains and into sewers, which has also seeped into his socks and soaked his trousers nearly to his knees. “Ye-es.”

Lestrade shakes his head and mutters something that sounds like _five hundred quid_.

“The suit, too.”

“To think I missed you. Come on. This time you sit in on the interview.”

“You said the Chief Superintendent still didn’t — .”

“Shut up and get in the car.”

Sherlock gets in the car.  
  
+  
  
Dinner? SH

Starving.  
  
Sherlock stares at the text, not sure he isn’t hallucinating.  
  
Where?  
  
Options zip through Sherlock’s brain. Chinese. John likes Chinese. They had Chinese the night John killed Jefferson Hope to save Sherlock’s life. Meaningful, but perhaps not the right note. Angelo’s is always a good option but might bring back memories John wasn’t ready to have on the table, discussions about what’s fine, which Sherlock now knows does not include faking one’s suicide in front of one’s lover to prove one is more clever than a psychotic consulting criminal, then disappearing for years. A good French place just opened, but John’s not thrilled with French food. He ate it because Sherlock liked it, but this time Sherlock will choose to please John, so Japanese is also out. John likes Indian, and Greek, and there’s the Thai fusion place where Sherlock found the cache of illegal assault rifles, it’s now being run by the criminal’s mother so the food is much better because she’s interested in cooking, not guns —

His phone buzzes.

Pick one, Sherlock. My stomach’s about to gnaw through my spine.

The Laughing Cat. SH

Thanks to not-so-gentle tutelage from Molly and Lestrade, he knows now that he should not have ordered a three course meal for Sarah Sawyer based on deductions and John’s random comments, even if he was spot on about what she likes.

Starters? SH

Spring rolls, please. On my way.

Sherlock gets spring rolls. He also gets dumplings and a soup John likes and Sherlock used to snitch spoonfuls of when John wasn’t looking. John arrives, surveys the array of options, and flicks a glance at Sherlock.

“You said you were hungry,” Sherlock says.

Without a word John splits the spring rolls and dumplings. He eats half the soup then passes the rest to Sherlock.

The intimacy nearly cripples him.    
  
+  
  
 _Dear Dr. Watson:_  
  
 _Thank you for your application for the Speciality Doctor position with the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. The hiring committee was very impressed with your unique qualifications, and, your schedule permitting, would like to meet with you on —_  
  
Date, time, and location follow. John’ll have to rearrange his surgery schedule, but he’s got an interview.  
  
+  
  
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Sherlock,” John says.

It’s the third time in two weeks they’ve met for dinner. Angelo’s is lit by candles at every table but their own. Angelo himself hugged John, told Sherlock he still needed to gain weight, shoved aside Sherlock’s protests that he’d gained a perfectly adequate half a stone, thank you very much, gave them the table by the window, and brought an enormous platter of fried starters. But he didn’t bring a candle.

It doesn’t matter. John’s arse over tea kettle down the slick-as-ice slope that is Sherlock Holmes, and gaining speed. Sherlock’s wearing jeans, a button-down, and a crew neck jumper. This segment of Sherlock’s wardrobe used to make him look like a pretty uni student, but lines now radiate from his wiser eyes, making him impossibly handsome as he levels a look at John over Angelo’s ravioli.

“All right. I don’t trust you. I still have trust issues.”

“A perfectly logical response, given how deeply I wounded you.”

Of late Sherlock lacks his smug superiority. He argues far less than he used to, and listens far more. John can tell when he’s crashingly bored, but at least he makes a considerable effort to manage it. John’s not quite sure what to do with this. He’s prepared for a fight that rarely comes.

“Setting you aside for the moment, I’m not sure I trust myself. My own judgement.”

Sherlock just stares at him. “What foolishness is this?”

“It’s not like I didn’t know you’d use my emotions — use me — to get what you need.”

Sherlock’s eyes close briefly. John still isn’t pulling his punches.

“But it’s not just you. I invaded Afghanistan.” He gives a laugh that fails to lighten the tension. “I have a history of throwing myself into impossible situations.”

“Go on.”

“You told me you were a bad risk.” He looks at Sherlock. “Who’s the bigger idiot: the one stepping off the roof or the one in love with a man who steps off roofs?”

“The man who steps off the roof is the bigger idiot,” Sherlock says with an earnest conviction John finds rather endearing.

John says nothing. He can’t bring himself to tell Sherlock about the job. He wants that job. Badly. He’s afraid of wanting the job, failing at the job. The pace towards deja vu might be breakneck, but he’s not yet willing to give Sherlock ammunition he knows will hasten the skid.

“So you don’t trust me or yourself.”

“That about sums it up.” John looks into Sherlock’s eyes and gives him what passes for his smile these days.

Where John expects rapid-fire deductions, there’s silence. John can’t look away from the pain, sorrow, and regret slithering like eels in Sherlock’s pale eyes. Finally, Sherlock says, “Forgive me, John.”

It’s such an odd phrase, so formal, almost liturgical the way Sherlock delivers it, and he’s holding John’s gaze like he did when they were in bed together. His voice is low, chafed, vastly more heartfelt than the rote delivery to Molly Christmases ago. It’s different even from what Sherlock said when grief dropped him to his knees in John’s flat. That was a raw, naked plea for an absolution that he needed like he needed air or water. Tonight the words are smooth and dark, well-worn, like sorrow, as if Sherlock’s handled them in his hands until he’s rubbed away the edges, turned them between teeth and tongue until he’s sucked off and swallowed the bitter pride they’re so often delivered with.   

“I am,” John says, and knows it to be true only after he’s spoken the words.

They finish up not long after. John’s learnt that he needs space after a moment like that, when he’s lowered his guard and let Sherlock even the slightest bit back in. It’s best if he goes home and deals with the emotional aftermath alone, in this case, the possibility that in John’s ability to forgive lies a healing they both need.  
  
  
Sherlock walks back to Montague Street through an evening woven with hints of spring. Every time he thinks he’s reached the end of the damage he’s done, he’s wrong. One thing he’s not wrong about is that John’s considering a step that brings his judgement into question again. This step cannot be removing Sherlock entirely from his life. John said, I am.

_I am_. Not _I have_ , or _I will_ , or thank you God _I can’t_ or _I won’t_.

_I am._ It’s a process. Forgiveness, Sherlock is learning, isn’t a single decision in time but a moment-by-moment extension of a grace he has not earned and does not deserve. Forgiveness, both taking and giving, requires time and patience. Sherlock ignores the first and profoundly lacks the second.

_So learn, genius. It’s the only way you’ll get him back._

The scent of warm, dark summer earth, a scent reminiscent of walks in the forests when he was young, fills his nostrils as he walks. Dappled green sunlight and good rich English soil, the kind of humus something can grow in. Humus. Humility.

Pride smells like scorched earth.

Despite John’s concerns, he clearly hasn’t lost his taste for untenable situations. He may not throw himself into them (Sherlock) anymore, but he’s not doing the sensible thing and walking away, either.

He walks on.  
  
+  
  
Sarah agrees to meet John for lunch at Attikis. She gives him a brief kiss on the cheek, then unwinds her scarf from her neck. “It’s lovely to see you, John.”

“You as well. Things good?” Then he notices the ring on her finger.

“Very good,” she says. “Tim asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

“Congratulations,” he says, but he’s distracted by his internal response, or lack thereof. He owes Sarah his life, loves her deeply, but not like that. No, when the conversation turned to lifelong commitment, his mind flashed to Sherlock.

They chat over the starters, sharing clinic stories, catching up on mutual friends. John gets her input into the position at the Veterans Assessment center, but that’s only part of the reason he reached out to her.

“I’ve been spending time with Sherlock,” he says.

She makes a noncommittal little noise.

“You’re not surprised.”

“No.”

“Am I doing the right thing?”

“I can’t answer that question for you, John. There was always something between you. Always.”

That’s the problem. Sherlock is the physical manifestation of what John can’t resist: risk, danger, the thrill of facing off with the impossible. “He’s still brilliant and dangerous. But he’s different.”

“In what way?”  
“It’s under control in a way it wasn’t before he fell. He doesn’t demand my time. He doesn’t expect me to drop everything when he snaps his fingers. He actually listens when I talk.” John sets his fork on his plate. “He was no different when he came back. I told him to piss off, and I meant it. He did. But something changed him and he…he calls it following me into grief. Now he’s different, and I’m not sure what to think. Or feel.”

Sarah’s eyebrows go up, just a little. “He came to see me, you know.”

John did not know that. “When?”

“After you told him to bugger off, is my guess. He was uncertain. Asking about you, about what you were like when he was gone.”  
Sherlock didn’t tell him any of this. “What did you say?”

“He gave me some cock-and-bull line about making you safe. I told him that safety is an illusion, and that he must not have known what he had in you, because if he had, he never would have done what he did to you.”

John blinks.

“I asked him if it was worth sacrificing your sanity, your sense of self.”

“What did _he_ say?”

“Nothing. Not a word. But…we’re talking about Sherlock, so I must be imagining this, but he seemed to collapse inside. I was watching his face, and…” She paused. “You’ve had to deliver bad news, yes?”

To platoon mates, to superior officers, to parents, to brothers and sisters and wives and husbands and children. It’s a rhetorical question; she’s giving John a few seconds to brace himself.

“His face was like someone who’s been told his brother didn’t make it through surgery, or his lover didn’t survive the crash. In a normal person, I know what that means. In Sherlock…?” She lifts one shoulder. Her ring glints in the weak sunlight.

“When was this?”

“Early fall. I don’t think he’d been alive again for more than a fortnight.”

“So after he talked to you, he decides to follow me in to grief.” He pauses. The old Sherlock would have used this conversation as evidence of his profound change, to manipulate John’s emotions and loyalties. The new Sherlock said nothing at all. “I don’t know, Sarah. I just don’t know. He’s more trustworthy, more open, but I’m more wary, more closed. We can’t seem to get aligned.”

“Give it time, John.”  
  
+  
  
The interview goes extremely well. John went to Barts with two of the psychiatrists, and they have a healthy respect for his service and what he brings to the table. At the end of the conversation they show him round the facility. The phone call the next day with an offer with a very decent salary is not a surprise.

He asks for a day to think about it.  
  
+  
  
Good day? SH

Mundane. Tell me about yours.

Interesting experiment in progress. Went for a walk in St. Regents. Having tea with Mrs. Hudson. SH

Nice weather for a walk. Say hello for me.

She says when are you coming to see her? SH

Tell her soon.

Now you. SH

Now me what?

Now you tell me about your day. I believe that’s how this works. SH  
6 colds, 1 pneumonia, 3 sports exams, 1 sprained ankle, 1 hypochondriac I’ve seen 4x in the last month, 1 vomiting 2yo. 0 walks in the park.

Sherlock rereads the text while Mrs. Hudson cuts him a second slice of cake. John is bored with his job. Has been for weeks.

I could do with another. SH

Vomiting 2yo?

It’s mildly funny, a purposeful misunderstanding used as humor, and there is something John’s not telling him under the diversion. It’s a way to deflect attention from his earlier whinge. Sherlock knows he should respond in kind, but can’t think of what to say. Then he remembers the emoticons.

O.o

I meant a walk in the park. SH

Main gate in an hour? Need to change into something that doesn’t smell of sick.

See you then. SH

“You used an emoticon.”

It’s the first thing John says when he reaches the gate. Sherlock slides his hands into the pockets of his jacket and sets off down the path. “They’re quite useful for indicating emotion when explicit conversation isn’t possible,” he says. “I intended to convey a lifted brow at your purposefully dense response.”

John ducks his head, hiding a smile. “I got the point, Sherlock.”

“Something’s troubling you.”

John flicks him a glance. “And you know what it is.”

“I have a hypothesis.” But he’s learned that knowing exactly what’s bothering John isn’t the point. The point is to let John tell him. The point is the give-and-take of conversation.

“I’ve a job offer. In London. Working with veterans.”

Sherlock makes a noncommittal noise. Inside he’s screaming _take it take it that’s perfect God it’s the Christmas I missed because I was grieving you_ but he keeps his mouth shut because that is _wrong_. He listens. It’s painful, but educational, because watching John talk is a pleasure he no longer takes for granted.

“Location? Oh, Camden Islington.”

John nods.

“Salary?”

“Decent for the NHS.”

“Concerns?”

“I’m a soldier with PTSD and trust issues,” John says mildly.

“You’re a doctor with an astonishing capacity for compassion and empathy,” Sherlock retorts.

They walk in silence for fifty yards.

“No deductions?” John asks. “Not going to state the blindingly obvious for me?”

He’s studying the path beneath his feet, not looking at Sherlock as he speaks. Sherlock’s not sure he can bear it if John turns down an opportunity he desires because of a fear Sherlock taught him. He’s cost them so much. But he can’t demand John heal himself in order to ease Sherlock’s mind. “I believe you know what you want to do,” Sherlock replies. “You merely wanted to talk it out with someone logical.”

John doesn’t deny this. “With a friend.”

Sherlock’s heart stutters. “With a friend,” he repeats quietly.

John walks to the tube. An hour later, Sherlock gets a text.

I’m taking the job.

I know. SH

Thanks for listening.

He considers his response carefully. You’re welcome. SH

Then he takes a risk.

I’ll enjoy having you closer. SH

He didn’t say it at the park. He didn’t importune or beg or manipulate. He waited, and let John come to his own decision.  
This is not what he wants. Not just _taking showing announcing deducing_ but mostly _taking_ scrapes him raw like a serrated knife dragged edgewise against his forearm. It makes him vulnerable to another’s whims, and vulnerability is the biggest risk of all.

Sherlock’s had time to remove his violin from the case and reacquaint himself with the opening movement of Prokofiev’sViolin Sonata no 2 in D Major before John’s reply arrives. It’s about the length of time it would take him to shower and get ready for bed.

I’ll like that, too. ‘Night.  
  
+  
  
The first week of the new job, John makes good on his promise to have tea with Mrs. Hudson. The tea is steeping in the pot while Sherlock watches John simultaneously shrug out of his coat, kiss Mrs. Hudson on the cheek, and hand her the triple layer sherry trifle she likes from Marks and Spencer.

“Oh, you remembered! Thank you, dear.”

When she slides it onto the table John sees the same cake, cut into slices. He looks at Mrs. Hudson.

“Sherlock brought one, too,” she says, “so this is lovely. More to share with Mrs. Turner next door. She’s not feeling well.”

When she turns to fuss with the tea pot, John cocks an eyebrow at Sherlock.

Sherlock lifts one in return. “Elementary,” he says in a low voice.

John smiles, half to Sherlock, half to himself. "We're going to have to coordinate," he says. He then asks after Mrs. Hudson’s son in Australia. That single question powers the conversation through tea and two slices of trifle each, continuing well into a second pot. Sherlock watches her, him, the interaction, filing away the nuances. He wonders how he could have ever thought John dull, ordinary, anything less than astonishing. John’s been managing a complex tangle of emotions his entire adult life. It’s fantastic, amazing, spectacular.

“Sherlock. Are you in there?”

He startles. “Sorry,” he says. “You were saying?”

“The tenants in B are moving out, dear,” Mrs. Hudson repeats. “She’s pregnant, and they want a garden for the little one. Do you want the flat?”

John’s steadfastly peering into his teacup. Fascinating, that bit of Spode with the dregs of Earl Grey in it. “Yes,” Sherlock says.

“That’s decided then,” she says. “I’m not going to be your housekeeper this time, dear.”

“Of course,” he says. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

Sherlock moves in two weeks later. It’s not the same. The previous tenants took down the Victorian wallpaper. The sitting room is brighter, the fridge new, but the stove’s the same, as is the kitchen table.

_We’re getting there_ echoes in his brain. John’s voice from the past. We’re definitely getting there.  
  
+  
  
Several weeks into the job John knows something has eased inside him. It could be London, could be Sherlock, could be the job. He can’t tell. He’s not sure he cares. He feels more whole than he has in years, which isn’t a major accomplishment, given the last two years, but even before that. The center of his life is shifting to Islington and Westminster, and he’s basically just sleeping at his flat. There’s a name for what’s happening between him and Sherlock — first coffee, then lunch, then cases, then dinner. He’s being courted, and he knows it when Sherlock offers entertainment after dinner.

He stares up into Sherlock’s face and sees the humming energy that signals something really cracking is on. “You’re playing parlor games for the amusement of toffs?”

“Mycroft’s idea,” Sherlock says, as if that explains everything, which it does. “He sees an advantage with me back and vaguely discredited. He wants a second opinion on several individuals at this party who may or may not be allying themselves with less salubrious factions in countries which do not have our best interests at heart.”

Just a little investigation in international terrorism, then. The average Saturday night with Sherlock Holmes. “And this is your cover story? Someone bet Mycroft you can’t recover a bottle of Talisker? Has he gone completely mad?”

“There’s some cultural reference I didn’t bother to catch. Want to come along?”

A case disguised as performance art. “Might as well give them the full dog and pony show,” John says. “You going to wear the hat?”

“I’m discredited, not ridiculous.”

The party is in a very posh section of Chelsea, and Sherlock finds the Talisker in his most flamboyant fashion. There is much swirling of the coat, piercing stares, and rapid-fire deducing. John follows him, holds what Sherlock hands him, opens doors and chests and sideboards and hutches, lifts back carpets on command, all while wearing his best Army doctor poker face because he’s struggling not to laugh at Sherlock’s patently ridiculous patter. Twenty minutes later John walks out the servant’s entrance gripping two hundred quid worth of whiskey negligently by the bottle’s neck. Two blocks away he hands the Talisker to Mycroft Holmes, waiting by yet another expensive black car.

“Thank you, Dr. Watson.”

John ignores him. When Sherlock joins them he outlines the relationships between the party-goers. “The accents are of interest,” Sherlock muses, and with that, he and Mycroft dive into a dizzying discussion of the linguistic differences in colloquial Arabic dialects before remembering John, who looks at both of them until they look away. Sherlock shakes his head in dismay.

“Apologies,” Mycroft says in a tone somewhat less supercilious than usual.

John lifts an eyebrow, then gives him one short nod.

“Oh,” Sherlock adds, almost as an aside. “If you’re looking for leverage, the host walked with the soreness distinct to a man twelve to twenty-four hours after an encounter with briskly wielded riding crop.”

“In an era of permissive sexuality, such information is of less value than it used to be,” Mycroft says rather mournfully before the full implications register. Then his eyebrows rise.

Sherlock says nothing.

Eyebrows still in the vicinity of his receding hairline, Mycroft’s gaze flicks to John.

John says nothing.

“He’s still not talking to you, Mycroft. Off you go.”

Mycroft departs with his expensive whiskey. John starts to giggle. Then laugh. Before long, Sherlock smiles his rare, broad smile.

“That was…ridiculous. It was part farce, part country house party, and part Bond film. You could be on stage.”

“I am always on stage, John.”

“Not always,” John says, before he can stop himself.

It’s not what he says. It’s how he says it, lowering his voice, roughening it a little. It’s the voice he’d use to seduce someone, and with Sherlock it’s intended to convey a memory.

_You after your encounter with a briskly wielded riding crop…on your back, your legs spread, the flush building on your chest and your gorgeous, possibly illegal throat, my fingers inside you, my mouth alternating between yours and your cock, you had one hand in your hair, the other in mine, you weren’t on stage, no, not the slightest hint of a performance in the way you were undone, under me, you were mine, only mine —_

Sherlock looks away. John clears his throat. He doesn’t fight his desire, just lets it surge to the tips of his fingers and the edges of his lips, then recede to pool low in his belly.

“Sorry,” he says when Sherlock looks at him again. He doesn’t mean to tease. It just comes out.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says, his voice licking like a cat’s tongue at John’s heated nerves. “It’s all fine.”

  
It might be. It just might be all fine. Eventually.

  
John wasn’t inviting him to bed. John let something slip he’s not sure he wants to act on. So Sherlock sends John home in a cab paid for with money stolen from Mycroft’s wallet while they were talking.

The first text arrives while he unlocks the door to 221 Baker Street.

You’re still brilliant. And amazing. And spectacular. I’m not being a tease. I’m stating fact.

“I’m home, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock calls. He thumbs a response automatically as he climbs the stairs to 221B. But he waits before he taps send, because John’s quite clearly still high on the adrenaline rush. Years ago this would have meant some truly spectacular post-case sex. A post-case wank won’t leave Sherlock slack-limbed, trembling, sweating, and sore, with John in a similar state under his arm.

_Focus._

John’s statements are true. They’ve always been true, and false modesty will never become part of Sherlock’s personality. John did tell him never to lie to him again.

He hits send.

I know. SH

Then he adds another response. Thank you. SH

You’re welcome.

It should feel oddly stilted, formalities deployed when none are necessary. But in his mind he adds John’s tone to the words, a caress, with a smile, one of John’s knowing smiles.

The next text comes totally out of the blue, apropos of nothing at all, or perhaps apropos of the man Sherlock is, his mind, his genius, what he can give his country.

I know no one else could have done what you did.

Sherlock’s breath halts mid-inhale. A shiver rushes over his skin, and he feels uncomfortably warm then cold, then warm again. He sinks onto a kitchen chair and stares at his mobile. John’s brought what he did into the open in a completely calm, rational manner.

He considers his response very carefully, finally settling on:

I know what it cost you, and us. Forgive me. SH

I am.  
  
+

John’s birthday arrives and brings the heat of summer with it. Sherlock gets an invitation he knows John insisted he receive, as Harry opens the door to him without a word of greeting but doesn’t punch him, so there’s that. Gathered in the garden of Harry’s girlfriend’s comfortable house are Lestrade, Harry and the girlfriend of over a year now, Mrs. Hudson, Sarah Sawyer, a handful of people from the old job, and another handful from the new job. It’s loud, close, and buoyed along by bottles of wine and the kind of inane talk Sherlock can now manage on a one-to-one basis with people he knows and likes — John, Molly, Lestrade, but especially John — but cannot hope to cope with in these circumstances. He stands in the shadows not dispelled by the Chinese lanterns strung between house and garage, a glass of wine in his hand, and observes. All these people love John, want to celebrate his birthday with him. John doesn’t need Sherlock. He has his sister, better friends, real friends around him. His brief time with Sherlock was nothing more than a blip on a radar screen, the kind of mad, whirlwind relationship everyone sighs with relief when it ends, and Sherlock _you stupid fucking idiot_ threw it away…

_Control yourself. Observe. Observe, and try to see. Above all, do not distress John._

After wine and food and cake with candles, everyone settles into the mismatched chairs haphazardly circled in the garden while John opens his gifts to much laughter and joking. Books from Sarah for his lengthy commute from Dagenham to Islington and back, loaded onto the electronic reader Harry and the girlfriend bought. They coordinated. Sherlock files that option away. Lots of bottles of wine, unimaginative, and yet John manages to make each one seem like a unique, much appreciated gift. A homemade rum cake from Mrs. Hudson. His parents sent tickets to see a play in Edinburgh, where John will go tomorrow, with Harry and the girlfriend.

Sherlock also has a gift.

He didn’t even hope to select the right thing, but something meaningful that wouldn’t be inappropriate. Everyone knew their story, so the gift couldn’t be too intimate, like the crew neck cashmere sweater in a denim blue the color of John’s eyes that would bring out the calm strength in his eyes but might seem like a critique of his clothes, or tickets to see a play or a concert because that would imply they were together again, which they were but they weren’t. Something, some _thing_ John would like that had nothing to do with pleasing Sherlock. Some _thing_ a friend would give, because he loves John. Something that honors John, all that he is, all that he gives.

He is trying so hard to be John’s friend when he wants is to be John’s lover, John’s partner, John’s mate. But he will be good at this, because being friends is the start he’s been given, and John deserves a better friend than Sherlock was before he fell.

“The last gift you got me was that ashtray you nicked from Buckingham Palace,” John says as he opens the paper.

Everyone dissolves into laughter. They are loose with wine and cake, good food and friendship, an occasion to celebrate on a gorgeous summer night. Sherlock smiles because that’s what everyone else is doing, but inside he writhes.

The stupid fucking ashtray.

He has no idea what to say, because that was for John, yes, but John doesn’t smoke, because John’s not an _idiot_ , so it wasn’t a proper gift but just showing off and it was wrong to steal it, except when Mycroft found out he was _furious_ , so it had to be right, however making Mycroft furious is _childish_ and good men aren’t childish and oh God, his heart is pounding too hard to think, because John’s lifting the lid on the shiny gray box. He parts the tissue and stares into it, his mobile, expressive face going utterly still but for his eyes, which flick back and forth, studying the contents.

“What is it, dear?” Mrs. Hudson asks, peering over his shoulder from her perch of honor on the arm of John’s chair.

“It’s a brick,” John says.

His voice is astonished. The more experienced people — Lestrade, Sarah, Molly, Mrs. Hudson — glance between Sherlock and John, then at each other, assessing whether or not intervention is required.

Harry sets her sparkling water on the table and glares at Sherlock.

“Not even Sherlock would get you a brick,” Lestrade says into the growing silence punctuated by the proverbial chirping of crickets. He throws Sherlock a look that reads _You will not survive the drugs bust I’ll rain on your head if you brought this man a sodding brick for his birthday, you wanker_.

Sherlock doesn’t say anything, because pointing out that Lestrade is an idiot because the box is obviously too shallow to contain a brick isn’t the point. John is. More specifically, the point is John’s reaction to Sherlock’s offering.

John continues to stare into the box. “A memorial to veterans of the Afghan War is going up in Regent’s Park. They’re raising some of the funds through donations in exchange for inscriptions on the brick wall at the base of the memorial. He’s made a donation, in my name. My name will be on the wall.”

The silence deepens, and for a second Sherlock is unable to deduce if he’s done something terribly, terribly wrong, or something splendidly right. He thought it was right, but maybe it wasn’t. John’s silent, not looking at Sherlock, which means he’s…embarrassed? He is _extremely_ modest, and oh Christ, it’s too much money compared to everyone else’s presents, a thousand quid, but he has money, lots of it, thanks to Mycroft and to the time he spent tracking down Moriarty’s brood of vipers. He’d burn every last note in a bonfire in Trafalgar Square if John wanted him to but John would never condone such waste so spending it to honor John’s service made sense and also held an element of sentiment but sentiment still isn’t his strong suit and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s misread John’s character and he should have considered what others would be able to spend, and maybe it’s a reminder of things that bring nightmares and cold sweats and tremors and wrenching sobs, of course it is, you idiot, —

John looks at him, his eyes shocked and gleaming with unshed tears, and Sherlock’s brain shuts off.

“Ta, Sherlock,” John says, then clears his throat. “Thanks very much.”

His voice is hoarse and quivering. Not embarrassed. Overwhelmed. Sherlock got it right, then. Spectacularly right. The relief is _giddying_ , buoyant enough to send him soaring over London like a bunch of balloons, but the look on John’s face keeps him right here, staring into John’s damp blue eyes. He nods at John. “You’re welcome,” he says, because that’s what people say, and because he means it.

John is most, most welcome to anything Sherlock has to offer, and if he does not have it, he will get it. For John.

People shift, clear their throats, sip wine. “Oi, give us a look,” Lestrade says, easing everyone through the awkwardness.

Sherlock cannot bear to watch while the certificate is passed from hand to hand. When it comes back to him, John carefully folds the heavy sheet of embossed stationery inside the tissue paper, sets the lid over the box, then tucks the box into the chair, beside his hip.

His hand is shaking a little.

Sherlock’s entire body is shaking. He’s irrationally jealous of the box, snugged in so warm and tight beside John, then irrationally pleased that his gift alone stayed so close to John, then irrationally annoyed with himself for being irrational. When the laughter and noise reach earlier levels, he edges into the kitchen, where he sits down at the table like someone cut his strings.

_Christ._ People do that for birthdays and Christmas and anniversaries and arbitrary holidays like Valentine’s Day _year after year_?

He’s contemplating the impossibility of it all when Sarah Sawyer comes into the kitchen bearing a stack of cake plates dotted with crumbs.

“Well done,” she says. She sets the plates on the counter, then dispenses dish liquid into the sink and turns on the tap. Water courses over her fingers as she tests the temperature and studies Sherlock like he’s a fast-growing bacterial culture of dubious origin. “Very well done, in fact.”

He feels something expand in his chest, something it takes a moment to identify. He’s earned Sarah Sawyer’s approval, and this makes him feel pleased. And proud.

He sits at the kitchen table and looks at her. She’s also pregnant, but she pled a course of antibiotics as the reason for declining the wine, probably because of the miscarriages. He keeps those details to himself. He thinks about loss, and pain, and loving completely. He thinks about what he owes Sarah Sawyer, for taking care of John.

“Thank you. What you said…at the restaurant…what you said helped.”

She smiles a sad, sad smile. “I’m glad,” she said simply, and slides the plates into the water.

  
Sherlock spends the rest of the party musing over the tangled web of relationships binding him to John and from there to everyone John loves and who loves John.

  
The girlfriend kicks them out eventually. With the exception of Sarah, Sherlock, and the recovering alcoholic, they are all varying degrees of pissed, and the Yard’s in attendance, so there’s much discussion about who should share cabs with whom until Sherlock, stretched to snapping by hours of human contact and the sheer inefficient inanity of it all, sorts it all out. It’s a simple matter of London’s street maps, which he’s memorized, and deducing which suburb someone lives in, child’s play with all the data swamping him, shoes and watches and  speech patterns. “You two,” he says, nodding at a man studiously ignoring the woman he’s been chatting up all night, “might as well get in a cab together now, to save time. She’s got the nightcap text drafted and ready to send, and you can put that thirty minutes to good use. Mrs. Hudson, of course, will ride home with me.”

There’s a moment of silence when he wishes he could call it all back. He’d done so well, until then. He would say he’s sorry, but he isn’t. He wants to go home and curl up in the dark to savor the way John looked at him, then process the thousands and thousands of pieces of data he’s filing under Party Behavior, except he doesn’t want to leave John’s side, but he refuses to let Mrs. Hudson ride back into the city by herself, and all of these idiots — people! —  are delaying the inevitable.

Then Lestrade nudges him. “Show off,” he says affectionately.

“It wouldn’t be a party unless Sherlock deduced,” Molly adds for the benefit of the wide-eyed newcomers.

The male half of the couple planning an assignation gapes at Sherlock. “How did you — ?”

“ _Don’t ask him that!_ ” comes simultaneously from Molly, Lestrade, and John.

More laughter.

John just smiles as if Sherlock is _brilliant, fantastic, amazing_. Sherlock would be pleased by this if John hadn’t rounded the corner on inebriated at a dead sprint several hours earlier.

They obediently bundle into the cabs according to Sherlock’s plan, including the couple planning an assignation, who take the first taxi in line without a hint of regret. Mrs. Hudson fusses into her coat and scarf. John’s spending the night with Harry and the girlfriend before a trip home to see his parents.

He puts his hand at Sherlock’s waist before he gets in the cab. “I don’t know what to say except thank you,” he says again, low and rough.

The heat of John’s palm radiates through Sherlock’s shirt, warming his skin. He looks down at John, who’s looking up at him. He can see desire in his eyes, but too much alcohol for Sherlock to trust the desire’s authenticity.

“You’re welcome,” he says, and slips into the cab. John’s hand drops to his side, then he closes the door.

  
  
The first text arrives just after noon the next day _noon train out of King’s Cross station arriving Edinburgh Waverley by quarter to five_. Sherlock’s at home, trawling through the cold case file for a little girl killed in a hit-and-run driver thirty years earlier, before CCTV made it more likely to track down the offender. He’s located the neighbors and arranged to conduct a series of interviews while John’s gone.

Time was, you’d have taken advantage of me.

Texting, Sherlock has discovered, is effective for declarative statements and simple conversations, but hideously ineffective for context. John’s text could be stating a fact, or it could be flirtatious. It all depended on tone, on the tilt of John’s head, on the way the thin skin around his eyes crinkled as he spoke, on whether he lowered and roughened his voice, as he had that night after he found the Talisker.

He errs on the side of caution. He will not assume, presume, theorize ahead of data. He will not take. Despite their near-pornographic sexual history, until he is absolutely sure John wants him, he will be as proper as a Victorian gentleman courting a trembling virgin. Because the objective isn’t sex. The objective is nothing less than John’s heart and soul, freely offered.

Times have changed. How’s your head? SH

Feels like someone removed my skull, lined it with sandpaper, then shoved it back on. Trains are evil.

Drink some water. SH

The swaying.

Loud. They smell.

Take paracetamol. SH

The sun. Is shining.

You might try not thinking about it. SH

Harry’s girlfriend laughs like a barking dog.

Water. Paracetamol. Nap. SH

Am going to be sick.

Ten minutes passes before the next text, enough time for John to stumble through the train car to the lav, vomit, clean himself up, and return to his seat.

Was sick.

Sherlock sighs and starts over at the beginning.

Drink some water. SH

Yes, mum.

It was a good night. Worth the hangover.

Best birthday ever, in fact.

_I love you_ , Sherlock types. Then he deletes it.  
   
  
Sherlock conducts his interviews. On his way home he goes back to the Bond Street tailor and buys the denim blue cashmere sweater. He gets it wrapped and puts it on the top shelf in his closet. For Christmas.  
  
For the first time since he came back from the dead, he allows himself to hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gone, Gone, Gone by Phillip Phillips is playing in my head during the birthday scene.


	9. Let Go Before It's Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I love you, John. Stay forever. Please."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rhianna’s Stay is playing during the last scene. It tried to be schmoopy but I like the way that song aches, recognizing that this isn’t easy, and it’s not ever going to be easy, but they’re believers.
> 
> The Afghan War memorial I mention here and in Pair of Forgivers, as well as the Prince William and Princess Catherine fund do not, as yet, exist. I believe the Labour Party has issued a call to consider a memorial, but location, sponsors, design, etc, are all figments of my imagination.

  
“Pound for your thoughts.”

John opens his eyes; Harry’s sitting across from him in the train compartment with Gilly, her girlfriend asleep in the seat next to her, head lolling on Harry’s shoulder, mouth wide open. He smiles at the sight, because the thought of Harry sitting still while an exhausted woman drooled on her shoulder was once as impossible as resurrection.

“I thought it was a penny,” John says.

“You looked so deep into your headspace I figured it would take at least a quid to get you out again.”

“It was a nice weekend,” he says. Gilly passed the _meet the Watsons_ test with flying colours, making his dad laugh as they went through the garden plant by plant, getting his mum’s scones recipe to make them at home for Harry. No wonder she’s knackered.

“It was,” she agreed. “Funny how everyone’s more pleasant when I’m not drunk.”

John has to agree; for once their family time wasn’t marred by Harry’s drinking or John’s more recent grey shroud of grief. They went to the play, had a lovely meal out beforehand, and even more lovely meals in the garden, enjoying the seemingly endless midsummer evenings. Their parents, while still active, aren’t getting any younger. Their relief at John and Harry’s transformations was palpable.

“I’m glad you’re doing so well,” he says. “Gilly’s good for you.”

At the sound of her name Gillian twitches a little. Harry rolls her shoulder to get Gilly’s head better balanced. “She makes things easier to bear,” Harry says, as if it’s a confession. Maybe it is. Harry hates vulnerability almost as much as Sherlock, and coped in very similar ways. “I still get angry, lonely, hurt, but then she pats my hand — “

“Your arse,” John says. “I was in the kitchen while you were cooking paella.”

Harry continues right over him. “ — and it’s somehow all right. Life’s still hard. But it’s easier.”

The paradox makes sense to John. “Clara didn’t?”

“She could have, if I hadn’t broken what we had. Again and again. Too many promises given, not enough kept.”

It’s the first time Harry’s admitted any responsibility for what happened with Clara. John’s going to leave it lie. They sit in silence for a little while, watching the summer sun-gilded scenery sway by. Breakfast stretched into brunch, and they took a later train than planned, the half past three departure, which will put them in London at just shy of eight o’clock. John has to work in the morning. His evening will be consumed by getting home, unpacking, getting ready for the work day. He doesn’t have time to go see Sherlock, who is off somewhere conducting interviews anyway.

Disappointment must have crossed his face, because Harry says, “That’s not what you were thinking about.”

It’s true. When Harry offered her pound, John was in the middle of reliving the memory of the birthday party. There was so much pleasure in it, and it’s not the first time since the party he’s wallowed in every detail. Initially Sherlock stood on the periphery, brow slightly furrowed as he tried to cope with the noise and laughter. John had chalked up his slightly stand-offish manner to strained relationships and the unfamiliar territory of a party. But he was there, glass of wine in hand like a disguise or a talisman, and that was enough for John.

He’d never thought Sherlock would be nervous over a present. If he’s totally honest with himself, he didn’t expect him to bring one.

Opening the box is the highlight of the memory. He slows it down, savoring the peculiar aura of twilight and the glow from the Chinese lanterns against the silver box on his lap, the not-unpleasant scent of a cigar drifting from the next garden over. Based on the shape and depth of the box he’d assumed _scarf_. Sherlock adored accessories, and had exquisite taste. John had been drifting in an island of time, thinking about having another glass of that really good wine, the brush of a warm breeze on his nape, the scent of Mrs. Hudson’s perfume reminding him of the upcoming trip to see his mum and dad. Then he’d opened the box —

— white tissue thick cream paper black lettering _not a scarf_ …

— _donation in the amount of one thousand pounds to The Prince William and Princess Catherine Veterans Memorial Fund…_

— _In recognition of and with deepest appreciation for your service…_

— _brick pavers ringing the circumference of the monument as your selfless sacrifice encompasses and upholds the liberties and values we hold dear…_

— _engraved John H. Watson, M.D., RAMC…._

He remembers how his throat closed, hot tears welled in his eyes, and his heart thumped against his ribcage. It was impossible, yet it happened. Sherlock selected and gave a gift so stunning and generous and outrageous and _right_ John couldn’t believe it.

Then Lestrade spoke, and John’s glad someone said _something_ because he’d forgotten words, much less how to put them in order. He’d recovered his vocabulary sufficiently to explain what it was _not a brick_ but perhaps not what it meant _everything_ when he looked at Sherlock, and then words were gone again.

John’s never seen anyone look at him with so much fear and hope in his eyes.

Sherlock stood in the gloaming, half and half out of the light thrown by the Chinese lanterns, utterly bared to John, and all he could come up with was _Ta, Sherlock. Thanks very much._

It’s what people say, and it’s inadequate, but he meant it. He meant it so very, very much. He’d never do that for himself. Maybe for a mate, but never, ever for himself. All weekend he’s tried to think of a more appropriate, thoughtful way for Sherlock to show he knew, respected, and honored John. He’s failed, come up blank every time.

“You’re doing it again,” Harry says wryly. “Five quid. Will that do?”

“Sorry, sorry.” John rubs his hand over his jaw.

“I know what you’re thinking about. Or rather, who.”

He doesn’t deny it. “What’s on your mind, Harry?” he asks, expecting Harry to remind John of how broken he was, how badly Sherlock devastated him, how crazy he is to even consider trusting Sherlock again.

“People don’t change,” Harry says.

“You did it,” John points out with a nod at Gilly.

“Ask Clara how long it took me. Ask her how hard it was to wait and watch, not knowing if this was the time I’d break through, or if I’d slip back yet again.”

He didn’t have to ask Clara. He’d lived it, although not as deeply and painfully as Clara. What’s more, Sherlock isn’t Harry. Sherlock is a singularity in a bespoke suit. “We’re friends,” he says.

“I saw the way you looked at him.”

_But did you see the way he looked at me? I always look at him like that, like he’s the fixed point in this incomprehensible thing that is my life, but fear and hope and (admit it) love in Sherlock’s eyes? That’s never happened before. That’s the miracle._

She’s trying to take care of him. It’s a newly learned habit occasioned by Sherlock’s attempt to fly off the roof of Barts, and once a Watson decides to nurture and protect, they’re done for. “We’re just friends,” he says again. For now. They’re getting closer to something other than friendship, but for the first time in his life, John’s considering the consequences of tilting at windmills.

Harry gently shifts Gilly until her head is pillowed on Harry’s thigh. “Heavy,” she comments, but it’s not a complaint. “I hit him, you know.”

“You hit him?”

“Right hook to the face.”

“At the _party_?”

“No, after he came back from the dead. He asked me to lunch, at Simpsons, no less, and I walked in, punched him in the face, told him to stay away from you, and walked out again.”

John stares at her. Flat out gapes at his sister, who’s never once done anything to protect him, and who must have caught Sherlock really, really off-guard. “You hit him.”

“I’m not sorry, either. He deserved it.”

“You hit him.” He sounds like a scratched CD, but Sherlock hadn’t told him this, either. He hadn’t told John about Sarah, or Harry.

“He didn’t listen, either — “

“I wanted to do that.”

Harry’s shoulders shake in an abbreviated laugh. Gilly grumbles a little, then subsides when Harry strokes her hair. “Sorry to step on your toes, then,” she says. “Why didn’t you? He really did deserve it.”

He remembers the blinding fury the color of the blood that would run from Sherlock’s face, the way the emotion gurgled and choked inside John like it did when someone tried to breathe through smashed cartilage and bone. “I was afraid if I started, I wouldn’t stop.”

That impulse is gone. He’s forgiving Sherlock, slowly but surely. The question of what will be left when the anger’s burned to ashes has yet to be answered. But offering forgiveness isn’t willingly trusting. John’s got trust issues. Ella doesn’t write the words on her notepad every session like she used to, but sometimes she does. Anymore he thinks it’s as much a note to him as it is to her. She knows he can read her handwriting upside down.

Harry’s expression sobered. “John…I know what he’s like. I know this from his side of things, and he’s a bad bet, a terrible risk. People don’t just change, no matter how great their intentions. I gave Clara lots of grand gifts, and then a few weeks later….” She strokes Gilly’s hair again. “I ruined Clara,” she admitted. Confessed, really. Her throat worked. “I took years of her life and gave back nothing in return. That’s what happens when generous souls fall in love with right bastards. I love you too much to see that happen.”

If John were a more cynical man, he’d laugh at Harry’s late-to-the-party attempts to take care of him, but he’s lost too much to walk away from anyone, so he just smiles at her. It’s a sad smile, not a happy one, because they’re past the point where pure happiness comes anymore. If Harry wants to care, he’s going to let her care.

John shifts, knowing his next words will sound like justification, needing to say them anyway. “He did listen, Harry. I told him to piss off when he came back.” She won’t understand the reference because she didn’t see Sherlock’s face in the rain, nor hear his the deduction based on the condition of Harry’s old phone that night on the way to the pink lady’s crime scene. She doesn’t know the power those words held for him and Sherlock. “I could have gone back to things exactly the way they were, back to his work — “ He stops himself before adds _back into his bed_ because there are things even sisters don’t need to know. “But I told him to piss off, and he did. He’s changed.”

“The threat of losing you has that effect on people,” Harry says. “Just…don’t rush, okay?”

He’s not rushing. When Sherlock appeared in his doorway, gaunt and trembling and grief-stricken, John had no intention of ever speaking to him again, but Sherlock is Sherlock.  He’ll  hurt John again, and John will hurt Sherlock. It’s what people do, as inevitable as dying. But Sherlock’s also not the man he was before he stepped off the roof of Barts.

John finds he wants to know who that man is. Because the other thing he’s spent the weekend fantasizing about is walking through Regent’s Park with Sherlock over the next couple of years, watching the memorial go up, seeing his name on the wall and knowing Sherlock did that for him. The gift, and the promise inherent in it, bring up the possibility of hope, to anticipate a future together.

It takes time, becoming human, but John’s patient. He can wait. He’s got issues of his own to figure out, two big hurdles to clear as he and Sherlock find their way. Sherlock’s different. He’s changed, still changing, right in front of John’s eyes.

The question now is, can John?  
  
+  
  
The hurdles present themselves rather naturally, like a dual jump in a steeplechase. As Sherlock’s work picks up, he asks John to do something John used to do all the time: he asks him to go to Barts and collect something from Molly, then bring it to 221B. This time it’s a kidney. Unlike their previous life together, this time Sherlock asks if it’s convenient, and he says thank you when John agrees.   
But it’s Barts, followed by 221B Baker Street. He hasn’t been to Barts since resurrection day, nor to flat B at 221 Baker Street.

John can do this. He can. He braces himself, though, sets the analytical portion of his mind to record, because of all the places with the power to cause a PTSD flashback, Barts is the worst, with their flat coming in a close second. Tea with Sherlock in Mrs. Hudson’s flat was fine. He’s fine at Speedy’s. He’s fine in Regents Park. He runs through medical school memories as he walks into Barts but when he takes the stairs into the basement, his mind begins to betray him. He hastens his pace down the stairs, moving on autopilot, then opens the door to the pathology lab at Barts and finds white-coated sitting Molly behind a microscope.  
Layers of Sherlock flood in like a tidal wave coursing down the stairs, crashing over John.   
  
_Afghanistan or Iraq?_  
 _I love you. SH_  
 _You shouldn’t be here, John._  
 _He’ll be cremated._  
  
 _Did you mean it?_

John stops, breathes through it.

_Take your time. As much time as you need._

The words are Ella’s, but he hears Sherlock’s voice. He breathes. In. Out. In. Out. Again. In. Out. Again. When the hot flash recedes to a cold sweat, he opens his eyes.

“John?”

Riding the crest of the wave is the memory of shouting at Molly Hooper loudly enough to terrify her when he realized he’d sat by a stranger’s body, mourning his lover. “I’m sorry,” he blurts.

Molly blinks. “For what?”

“For shouting at you, for scaring you, the day Sherlock came back. I was out of line.”

“No, you weren’t,” Molly says. Her expression is matter-of-fact. Thanks to Sherlock, they’re all older, wiser, less willing to expend energy on things that don’t matter, in the end.

John’s about to explain that in his worldview, men don’t terrify women, no matter what the provocation, especially men trained to kill, men who are gripping the edge of their sanity with bloody, torn fingernails, but the cold sweat’s giving him goosebumps, so he takes her at her word. She hops down from the stool and comes over to him, rubs his shoulder, then gives him an awkward hug. The breaks in the friendships may have healed, but like mended bones they ache in the right weather. This is definitely the right weather.

He clears his throat and dredges out of his memory Molly’s handwriting on a package containing a Blackheath scarf. Anything he opened after Sherlock’s gift is a bit of a blur. “Thanks for the scarf.”

“You’re welcome,” she says with a smile. “Bit hot for it now, but summer never lasts long.”

“I’m glad you came.”

“I’m glad I did, too. I wouldn’t have believed that gift if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

He latches on to the newer memory like a baby monkey clinging to its mother. “Did you know?”

“No,” she admits. “He came up with that all on his own.”

This is likely true. Lestrade obviously didn’t know what was in the box, and John can’t imagine Sherlock asking Mycroft for help with a present for John. He knows what Sherlock is doing for him. He knows, and he’s watching. Waiting.

At 221B.

He clears his throat, shuffles a little, then steadies himself. “I’m here for the kidney.”

“He didn’t ask for a kidney.” Molly looks around, as if somehow a diseased human kidney will appear in a tray.

John shows her his text stream from Sherlock.

If not inconvenient, please pick up kidney at Barts. SH

Not inconvenient.

Thank you. SH

Molly shows John her text stream from Sherlock.

How was your mother’s fifth week of radiation? SH

How was your mother’s sixth week of radiation? SH

The texts are both from nearly seven weeks earlier. John’s so astonished he almost forgets about the kidney.

“The texts came like clockwork, once a week, at 10:47 a.m. I think he had reminders set up on his phone,” Molly says.

“That sounds like Sherlock,” he says absently.

He wanted Sherlock to be human, not a _fucking selfish machine_. But he’s going to be the Sherlock version of human, which will mean setting up reminders to ask after Molly’s sick mum, but forgetting to tell her to find him a kidney. Sherlock feeling the feels, feelingly, is Sherlock, brilliant, focused like a laser, and forgetful.

He purses his lips, blows out his breath and looks around the lab. Now in addition to sweaty and shaky and slightly sick to his stomach from the flashback, he’s annoyed.

Molly’s watching him carefully. “He’s trying, John. He’s really trying.”

“I know.” He exhales through pursed lips. “Okay. Right then. I’ll see you later.”

“Do you know what he wanted? Any particular pathology or — ”

“No,” John says shortly, then takes a breath and counts to five. “Maybe he didn’t need it anymore. He’ll be in touch.”

He walks to Baker Street. At some level he knows he’s quicker to flare than he should be. It takes a while, but in that time he’s able to untangle the knot inside him, separating the component strands into _Going Back To Barts_ and _Sherlock Taking John For Granted_.

This frame of mind is not the one he’d hoped for whilst approaching 221B Baker Street for the first time since the resurrection.

A pink and gold sunset gilds the summer sky as John steps through the unlocked front door. Stopping to say hello to Mrs. Hudson feels like an act of cowardice, so he climbs the stairs to B, where the door is slightly cracked. He pushes it open to find Sherlock sitting on the settee, paper strewn haphazardly on the table in front of him. He’s wearing tailored trousers and a button down shirt, and is barefoot. One long finger rests on the top sheet of green and white printer paper from the 80s while he texts with the other hand. His shoulder blades jut against his dark blue shirt, but it’s the sight of Sherlock’s pale, long, bare, defenseless feet that stops John in his tracks.

A tumult of emotion-laden memories writhe inside him like a basket of colorful, poisonous snakes — Sherlock in his pajama pants, a t-shirt, and the blue robe, barefoot and still smelling of John’s sweat; fighting over who would clean the loo; sitting in their coats after the explosion blew out their windows; watching crap telly; endless cups of tea; the gray haze of grief so terrible it was physically painful — all illuminated by a bolt of physical desire so strong he fears he’s lit up like a summer storm. It’s how he feels. Dark thunderclouds split open by desire.

By Sherlock’s bare feet. Feet that used to climb from John’s calves to the backs of his thighs to his arse as John fucked him insensible.

He stops breathing.

It’s been so long, so fucking long since he’s felt Sherlock’s body against his, inside his, around his, and _Jesus God were they good together_.

But the sky goes dark again. Like lightning, lust cracks then disappears. It’s the roiling grey and black that remains.

John can probably get away with never going to Barts again for the rest of his life. Not going to 221B Baker Street _home_ is a different story, and right now he can’t tell if the problem is the location, Sherlock’s thoughtlessness, or his own fucking head.

He has to know.

Sherlock looks up and for a split second, he was back, arrogant and distant and dismissive and annoyed by the interruption. Then his eyes widen.

“Shit. _Shit!_ ” His hand flies to his hair as he leaps to his feet, disturbing another pile of paper beside him. It slides to the floor as Sherlock says, “The kidney…John…I forgot.”

Of course he didn’t think about how John might feel at Barts, or in the (their) flat. But that’s not fair, and John knows it. “It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry.”

Hand still fisted in his curls, Sherlock looks panicked, as if one unnecessary errand will send John slamming out of his life forever.

“Sherlock. It’s all right.”

But it does bring up the question of how Sherlock will behave as he’s drawn deeper and deeper into The Work. Those are the cold case files he wheedled from Lestrade, and now Mycroft’s involved. Sherlock’s old life beckons with a come-hither wink and a sexy little smile.  Which leaves John Watson, formerly Sherlock’s PA and blogger…where? Is there a blog post in this? How would he write it up?

He _has_ to know.

He steps into the flat and closes the door behind him. “What are you working on?”

“Maisie Parks, six years old, was killed by a hit-and-run driver in the East End over thirty years ago. She was walking with her sister, who let go of her hand for a split second.” Sherlock seems to realize where his hand is, runs his hand through his hair, and lets it drop. “I remember all the times I ran away from Mycroft when he was supposed to be watching me.”

“Harry never could keep me in hand, either,” John offers.

Sherlock’s face relaxes. “I interviewed all the surviving witnesses while you were in Edinburgh. No one had anything else to offer, but someone must know something. Someone has to know something.”

“Have you tried the website forums? Are they even still active?”

“Neither of us shut them down,” Sherlock says, “and no one else had access. The hosting fees were charged monthly to my card.”

Sherlock looks at him. “You wrote up the cases after we solved them. I’ve not had much worth blogging about since I returned.”

John shrugs. “Why not ask for help? Get Lestrade’s permission, then post the details. See if someone comes out of the woodwork. We live in a global village now. Interviewing the neighbors doesn’t just mean the people who lived next door.”

“Do you mind?”

John sits down with Sherlock’s laptop. “Password?”

“The Fibonacci sequence to eleven digits, replacing three with capital B and one with zed.”

“So, what is it?” John asks without looking up from the keyboard. He’ll fat finger this for sure.

Sherlock rattles off a sequence of numbers and letters. John opens the website and finds his administrator privileges still intact after nearly three years. The spam inbox is crammed full. John deletes the contents of the box, skims a few conspiracy theory posts around Sherlock’s demise, then remembers it’s not his job to maintain the website anymore. Keeping that firmly in mind, he uses Sherlock’s admin identity to pin a new post to the top of the main page, composes the content while Sherlock texts Lestrade, then the girl’s surviving sister. By the time John’s got the entry ready to post, complete with a link to a newly created Facebook page for The Science of Deduction, Sherlock has responses in the affirmative from both the Yard and the family.

“Dinner?” John asks absently as he copies, pastes, and posts. _Have at it, hive mind._

“Chinese?”

They order in and eat dim sum while John pores over the other files. He doesn’t have much to offer, but he’s able to suggest a couple of new identification technologies that might be useful if the evidence hasn’t deteriorated, and he keeps himself moving briskly, because the air’s charged with both John’s lingering uncertainty and desire so potent John imagines it’s seeping from the freshly plastered walls. Before he knows it, it’s well after midnight.

John yawns, then rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Is the second bedroom habitable?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll just stay over. No point in going out to Dagenham just to turn around and go to Islington.”

Despite his attention seemingly focused on his laptop, Sherlock goes still. “Are you sure?”

He _has to know_. Sherlock is waiting for him, and will wait for him, and he deserves to know if John’s going to flake out. John needs to know, too. Working with veterans taught him that not knowing is worse. If you can identify your triggers, then you know. You can plan, work around them, face them down. Not knowing is worse.

“I’m sure.”

Sherlock goes to the linen closet in the bathroom. “These should fit the bed in your — the second bedroom,” he says, and hands John haphazardly folded sheets. “Now. Blankets. You prefer two, but it’s warm tonight so perhaps just one.”

John’s heart is pounding, and he’s broken out in a second sweat. His cock is half hard, but his stomach’s twisting, so he takes the quilt from Sherlock and climbs the stairs to the second bedroom. Sherlock appears in the doorway with the second blanket. John takes it, then puts his palm to Sherlock’s chest, and urges him out the door.

“Thanks. Get some sleep,” he says, then closes the door.

Heat sears his palm like he laid it to a hot burner, then snatched it back. It’s the first time he’s touched Sherlock since the night before Barts. Yes, it was to shove him out a door, but it was touch. He makes the bed himself, strips to his pants, and climbs in.

He has to know. A self-identified sociopath who risks his life to prove he’s clever is a good fit for a soldier with PTSD and an adrenaline habit. But with every passing week, Sherlock’s new identity as a good man gains shape and heft and confidence while John’s past continues to ambush him.

He has to know.    
  
+  
  
Sherlock has no idea what that was all about, and John’s touch lingering in the skin over Sherlock’s breastbone doesn’t make it any easier to think. Consequently, he doesn’t sleep for a long, long time. He eases into the leather chair in the sitting room, tucks his knees under his chin, and lets the feel/demeanor of a flat with John in it seep through his skin, into his bones.

The next morning, Sherlock awakens in the chair to see a cup of tea on the kitchen table and a plate strewn with toast crumbs on the counter. His neck twinges sharply when he rights his head. Massaging the muscles, he checks his phone and finds a single text from John.   
  
I think it’s best if you don’t ask me to go back to Barts.  
  
The lingering tension in John’s jaw, the unwavering approach to the Maisie Parks case, and the resolute set of his shoulders as he climbed the stairs to the second (his) bedroom all crystalize in Sherlock’s brain. He’s trying to prove something to himself, to Sherlock, but mostly to himself. Sherlock shakes his head in disbelief, then regrets it as his neck reminds him that he’s nearing forty. He’s managed to turn London into a second Afghanistan for John, riddled with places that waylay his mind and trigger flashbacks.    
  
I agree. I’m sorry. SH

Now I know.   
  
Sherlock can read John’s shrug in the text. He climbs the stairs to stand in the doorway of John’s bedroom. The bed isn’t stripped as it would be if John were a helpful guest who expected Sherlock to wash the sheets immediately. It’s not rumpled as if John were leaving a hotel room. The bed is neatly made, as it was every morning John lived in 221B, as if John might come back to it that night.

His heart skips a beat. It’s possible John made the bed. It’s also possible John didn’t sleep in the bed. He could have spent the night sitting with his back to the wall, hunched over, breathing like he does when he’s struggling through his memory’s assault on his mind, without asking Sherlock for help.

Did he ever ask Sherlock for help?

Sherlock struggles to remember. Before his resurrection he paid not the slightest attention to John’s needs. Did John ask for anything other than affection?

No. John asked for nothing for himself.   
  
Have a good sleep? SH

Like a rock. Could have slept another eight hours.   
  
Perhaps 221B wasn’t a field of landmines, then.

Carefully, as if sharp movements could jar reality right off the rails, Sherlock closes the door to John’s room. He checks the website and Facebook page. Lots of likes and reposts, but no responses. He goes back to his experiments, and in the afternoon he goes to the shops, where he studies the active ingredients in different products for cleaning household appliances and deduces the housewives for the practice until he’s bored.

This is a ridiculous use of his time.

I require cleaning staff with suitable security clearance. SH

Nesting, are we? MH

Perhaps. SH

Mycroft’s next text is a CCTV still picture of John leaving 221B Baker Street that morning. John’s face tells the story of his night. He looks tired, but at peace with something, his eyes clear, ready to face the day.

Relief pulses through Sherlock. Appearances must be maintained, however.

Fuck right off, Mycroft. SH

I’ll send CVs. MH

Thank you. SH  
  
+  
  
It’s a perplexing problem. Like forgiveness, trust cannot be forced. John can offer forgiveness, but he has to open to trust. He has to let Sherlock in again. He has to be vulnerable to him in a way he never was before.   
  
Sherlock thinks on it. Trust is lived into by being trustworthy. Therefore, he will demonstrate a continued capacity to be reliable.  
  
How’s Neverwhere? SH

Brilliant. Radio 4 did a version a while ago. I’m going to track that down and give it a listen.

Sherlock cannot think of anything less interesting than Radio 4’s programmes, but then he doesn’t have John’s punishing commute. While he’s considering replies that do not suggest John’s brain will rot right out of his ears, another text arrives.

Off at four today. Dinner?

Come to Baker Street. SH

It’s casual, nothing to suggest John might not be able to handle a simple meal in the flat that used to be his home. It’s not a test. It’s an offer made to a friend who worked long hours in a difficult job.

You’re not going to cook, are you?

You never cooked before.

Sherlock rolls his eyes.

Cooking is chemistry. I am a chemist. Deduce. SH

+

When John opens the door to 221B Baker Street, delicious smells waft down the seventeen stairs he knows so well. Jesus. Sherlock got takeaway. John’s about to lead with an apology when Mrs. Hudson emerges from her flat, a solicitor’s envelope in her hand. Her eyes are wide as she beckons him over, one finger pressed to her lips.

“What’s going on?” John asks in a stage whisper.

She holds out the envelope. John opens the flap and tips the papers into his palm. The top sheet is a letter from the Bank of England, and clipped to the paper is the deed to 221 Baker Street, City of Westminster. He looks at the document, then at her. When he’d moved out after Sherlock’s disappearance, she’d been struggling to make ends meet.

“How did you — ?”

“I didn’t,” she says, still whispering, then glances significantly up at the B flat. “He says he had nothing to do with it, but who else? Did you — ?”

Sherlock’s home, his home, is the flat upstairs, in this building, so John senses a combined effort from the Holmes brothers. He supposes he’ll have to start speaking to Mycroft again. A slight smile lingers on his face as he slips the papers back into the envelope and hands it to her. “Wasn’t me, love,” he says. “I’m happy for you, though.”

“I can’t…I don’t…how do I thank someone for _buying me a building_?”

It’s tricky, John muses. Like saying thank you for buying a brick. “Rum cake? He used to eat half of yours at one sitting.” During her time in Florida Mrs. Hudson picked up a recipe that called for enough rum to knock out a rhino. Sherlock slept for hours after he ate it.

“It hardly seems enough,” Mrs. Hudson objected.

“He’ll like it.” The aroma of curry and ginger continues to waft tantalizingly to John’s nose. “Oi, Sherlock,” he calls up the stairs at the open flat door, “I was only taking the piss. You didn’t have to get takeaway.”

“I did _not_ get takeaway,” Sherlock bellows back from the kitchen.

“I smell biryani,” John shouts, then winces. Sherlock does bring out the shouty in people. “Did you get takeaway?” he asks his former landlady at a more reasonable volume. It smells good. Really good.

She shakes her head, tucks the envelope under her arm. “I’m out of rum,” she fusses.

“Put that in a safety deposit box,” John cautions.

“Freezer tonight, bank tomorrow,” she says and plucks her handbag from the chair by the door.

Sherlock appears at the top of the stairs, wearing a black apron over trousers and tailored shirt, with a lethally sharp knife in one hand and a terrified tomato in the other. “You smell biryani because I cooked biryani. Good evening, Mrs. Hudson. Would you care to join us for dinner?”

John smiles at her. Sherlock can’t see her expression, but John can, astonished by her good fortune, overwhelmed by the impossible.

“No, thank you, dear. You two enjoy yourselves.”

John jogs up the stairs. Sherlock lifts an eyebrow. “She’s out of rum,” John says.

  
Inviting Mrs. Hudson for dinner was the right thing to do. John’s approving smile tells him so. Later Sherlock will find a way to thank her for declining. Based on her response to the deed to 221 Baker Street, he’s also going to wait to tell her that she holds the patent for the mould-killing solution he’s developed in the months since his resurrection. Mrs. Hudson, who survived an abusive husband and years of explosions and gunshots and shouting not to mention the sodding Blitz, who scrimped and saved just to get by, is well on her way to becoming a very, very wealthy woman. 221C is now habitable for the most sensitive allergic asthmatic, but she won’t ever need to rent it out again.

They drink wine with the biryani and John compliments both rather a lot. Then they watch crap telly. Sherlock tries to be polite but most people who end up on game shows are idiots so he ends up yelling at the screen. John glances between Sherlock and the tv, and giggles his lovely, unique, unselfconscious giggle.

Why do people laugh? Because they’re —

 

happy

 amused  
 content  
 relaxed  
 at ease  
 pleased with life  
 comfortable in their surroundings  
 falling in love.   
  
Oh God. Please.  
  


When they switch off the telly, John’s so boneless he’s slumped down in his chair, and he doesn’t look at Sherlock when he speaks. “Tell me where you were. What you did.”

It’s late. Very late. Traffic noise is almost nonexistent, and the city has the eerie, slumberous pulse it takes on in the wee hours. In between one vibrating London heartbeat and the next, awareness materializes in Sherlock’s brain.

_John’s testing himself._

“Is this for the blog?” Sherlock asks. “Because I think Mycroft would prefer — “

“It’s not for the blog. It’s for me.”

_Definitely testing himself._

“You don’t have to know. Ever. That time doesn’t have to exist for you.”

John turns his head to look at Sherlock. “How long have you been back from the dead?”

Ten months, two weeks, three days, and sixteen hours, or six months, three weeks, five days, and two hours, depending on which resurrection John means. The first dates from the moment John peered into the backseat of Mycroft’s car. The second dates from the moment John didn’t throw a kneeling, wrecked Sherlock out of his flat. “Nearly a year,” Sherlock hedges.

“In all that time have I asked where you were?”

“Once,” Sherlock says scrupulously, in case John’s forgotten. Sherlock hasn’t. “The first time we had dinner. The story made you angry.”

“It did,” John concedes. “Times have changed. I want to know.”

Sherlock waits, but John doesn’t look away. His willingness to face down his own fears once again staggers Sherlock. “I’m afraid this will provoke a response similar to your reaction to Barts.”

John shifts, looks away. _Don’t bring up Barts again._ “I don’t feel the same way about this as I do about Barts. I can’t go back there. Not right now. Maybe not ever. But I’m here, in the flat. I’m all right. I want to know where you were.”

“John…”

“Two years of your life are unknown to me. I want to know.”

Sherlock goes still. He looks at John, waits until he lifts those astonishing blue eyes to Sherlock’s. “It’s unpleasant.”

“Mycroft is unpleasant. The DVLA is unpleasant.”

Fair enough. “Moriarty was involved in every revolting permutation of dehumanizing exploitation possible. He destabilized entire countries, bled money from struggling economies, financed heroin and cocaine pipelines all over the world. He bought women and children, traded them for drugs and guns, then sold those drugs and guns to addicts and warmongers who preyed on the weak and helpless and displaced.”

“Still not scared.” He smiles, and it’s John’s broken, helpless, indefatigable smile. “I invaded Afghanistan, remember? We spend our lives in the darkness most people don’t know about and would run from if they did. Unless you don’t want to remember what you did and saw, tell me. Please.”

His gaze locked with John’s, Sherlock waits another thirty seconds, then he begins. He picks up the tale where he left off, seeing John at the cemetery, and this time John doesn’t storm out. He watches Sherlock talk. Mirrored in his blue eyes is the emotional aftermath of everything Sherlock saw. Sherlock paces, gesticulates, draws diagrams, relates complicated relationships between law enforcement, criminals, the press, public world leaders and secretive terrorists. He tells John everything.

John’s watching, and Sherlock is very nearly fine.

  
Sherlock froze when John used _we_. When he started talking, he lit up like a fucking supernova confined only by pale English skin, and there he was, the man John loved (still does) but more. Intellect and intuition melding with heart and soul. It’s four in the morning before Sherlock winds down. John’s eyes are gritty with exhaustion, and his guts are tangled in knots from hearing Sherlock’s tale. He faced all of that alone, so terribly, heartbreakingly alone, and yet, after all of that, he chose to break and then heal, for John.

“You are. Amazing.”

Sherlock shrugs. _Shrugs!_ “I’ll call you a cab, shall I?”

_No._

“I’ll just…stay?”

Elbows braced on his knees, Sherlock cuts John a glance full of heartbreaking vulnerability. The street light picks up glints of silver at Sherlock’s temple. “Of course.”

Sherlock trusts him. John could break this Sherlock, break him into tiny, irreparable pieces. Break him harder and more permanently than his family, his school fellows, or the drugs. Sherlock’s waiting for him, and will wait for him forever.

He’d better be really fucking sure he’s able to make that move.

He has to know. He has to know he trusts Sherlock. He did once. He can again.

He just has to _know._

“Thanks,” he says.    
  


John climbs the stairs to the second _his_ bedroom. Sherlock sits on the settee, observing his emotional state. Telling John the tale of his disappearance hollowed out his ribcage and abdomen, leaving behind an ache so potent it guts him. He leans into the desire, heightened almost unbearably by the emotional connection he’s forming with John, leans into the ache, leans into the terrifying possibility that unrequited love is now his lot in life with John.

He tries to be properly grateful for friendship, but it aches, Christ, how he aches. For a long, heated moment his mind toys with the idea of opening the door to John’s room, sliding into his bed, and along John’s skin before he’s awake enough to protest. He’s done it before. He remembers, in exquisite detail, everything John likes. John wouldn’t awaken until it was too late, until Sherlock’s clever mouth and deft fingers make it impossible for John to do anything except writhe and gasp and shudder.

But sex is a complication they do not need, and he knows now, truly understands, what it means to have earned another human being’s friendship, how fragile that possession is, how quickly it can be lost.

He is an aching, trembling mess of desire and angst and need. But he breathes through it, lets it be what it wants to be, and eventually it recedes. He falls asleep on the settee, and dreams that John is watching him again, his face sober, thoughtful. When the click of the front door closing wakes him, he’s covered with a blanket. A steaming cup of tea sits within reach on the table, his mobile propped against it. There’s a text from John.  
  
There’s this new invention called a bed. Good for sleeping. You should give one a go.

He rubs his neck with one hand as he replies with the other.

They’re good for something else, too.

_Delete._

Dull. SH

You still look deceptively innocent when you sleep. Thanks for dinner. See you soon.   
  
+  
  
Free tonight? Possible break in the Maisie Parks case. Could be a late night. SH  
I’ll be there around six.  
  


John opens the door to 221B with a duffle bag in hand.

“What’s that?”

“A change of clothes, a razor, and a toothbrush. When I go to work in the same clothes the patients spend the next two days making up increasingly filthy stories about where I was and who I was with. The worst of the lot is Ernie Garrett, but I’m afraid he’s using humor and sexual jokes to cover some pretty deep — ”

He catches sight of Sherlock’s face and stops abruptly. “Do you mind?” John asks, as if he’s somehow gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick.

“Not at all,” he says quietly. “I don’t mind in the least.”

A slight flush darkens John’s cheekbones. He trots up the stairs. Sherlock hears drawers opening and closing, then the sound of plastic clattering into the toothbrush holder affixed to the tiled bathroom wall.

Once again, the intimacy almost cripples him.   
  


“Where are we going?”

“Pulborough. In Sussex,” Sherlock adds, when John lifts his eyebrows for further clarification.

“You caught a break?” John asks as Sherlock navigates them out of the city proper on the A24. “A hit on the website?”

“Facebook, actually,” Sherlock says. “An excellent strategy, for which I thank you. It’s the agony columns of a hundred years ago, people’s entire lives posted online, with pictures, and archived for my use. A private message from one Milly Richardson, who was quite eager to tell me she heard about my little adventure with the Talisker. Name dropped several of the Chelsea set at the house that night. Quite the gossip, our Milly. Remind me to not thank Mycroft. She claims to have information. I checked her name against the tip log and the interviews. She’s not on the list, although with thirty year old data, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t.”

A familiar heady electricity courses through his veins, mixed with an unfamiliar component. He’s excited by the prospect of solving the case _winning!_ but he’s also wary of what he feels. In the past he would have demanded John come along so John could watch Sherlock be brilliant. Now he’s not sure his reactions will be appropriate. He has a suspicion as to why she contacted him, and there is significant _bit not good_ potential to this situation. He needs John’s presence steady him.  

He parks the car on a white gravel drive curving in front of a three storey stone house on the edge of the South Down National Park. The gardens, tended by two uniformed workers, teem with fall color. The woman who opens the door is in her mid-fifties, with a neat bob, a two-piece ensemble, and low heels. But the East End formed her words and accent, try as she might to shake it, and there’s a smug cast to her mouth that rubs Sherlock wrong.

“Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson,” he says.

Her gaze brightens. “Oh. I looked at the website and it was just you, Mr. Holmes. I didn’t expect your blogger.”

A _fan_. “Dr. Watson is consulting in his capacity as a medical professional.” If said capacity is as Sherlock’s guide to the appropriate nuances of human interaction, it’s a form of therapy administered by a medical professional, he supposes. “May we come in?”

She admits them to the cool stones of the foyer and leads them to a sunny sitting room overlooking the downs, then rings for tea. Sherlock and John sit down side-by-side on the couch. Almost instantly a maid bearing a tray with a tea pot and two kinds of biscuits appears. Sherlock takes one, because it’s what people do. John takes two and bites into one as Sherlock begins.

“Maisie Parks. Six years old. Not even three stone. Tiny little thing.” He wants her to hear the name, the details.

“Two days after the incident, a friend of my mother’s asked me to say her son spent the evening with me that night.”

Sherlock knows who her mother’s “friend” was, and he doesn’t like the little game she’s playing. “His name?”

“Walter Chessman.”

“A lifelong alcoholic with a reputation for driving whilst under the influence,” Sherlock says. “The police interviewed him and he denied being behind the wheel that night. Did you know why your mother’s friend might ask you to lie about his whereabouts?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Oh, no. I didn’t. The police never contacted us, you see.”

Sherlock sets his tea cup and saucer on the polished table between them. “Did you suspect why?”

Mrs. Richardson looks at him like he’s being unreasonable. Her chin lifts. “I suspected, yes,” she said. “My father owned a repair shop. He took care of the Chessmans’ vehicles.”

John sets his half-eaten biscuit on his saucer. As he transfers crumbs from his fingers to the napkin, his hand brushes Sherlock’s thigh.

The Chessmans likely eased Mrs. Richardson into the schools and social engagements that lifted her to her current strata. “Your mother was their housekeeper, not Mrs. Chessman’s friend, and in due time you married a cousin. Not quite the Chessmans milieu but he’s worked his way up in airline industry. So you said nothing.”

“Walter was from a very good family,” she says. “His father was in finance in the city, and his mother chaired a number of charity causes.

Walter himself was a highly respected solicitor. He made a mistake.”

“A little girl _died_.”

John’s hand brushes his thigh, this time a little harder, as he sets his cup and saucer on the table.

“No one asked,” Mrs. Richardson says again. High colour stains her cheekbones under the rouge. “Don’t you see? No one asked. And I’m telling you now.”

Silence.

“Why now?” John says.

“Because Walter Chessman died within the last six weeks,” Sherlock says. He doesn’t know this from any database or records. He knows this because this priggish woman wouldn’t have come forward if the man responsible were still alive.

“He needed a liver transplant and didn’t get one,” she says, as if the NHS somehow failed the excellent Chessman family.

“Donor organs usually come at great cost to individuals and families, and therefore go to people who will take care of them, not lifelong alcoholics,” John replies. If Mrs. Richardson knew John even slightly, she would understand that his remarkably even voice covered great depths of disdain.

“Well. I’ve told you what I know. Thank you for coming by.”

Sherlock doesn’t get up. He looks around the home’s sunny interior, the sprawling deck overlooking the parkland, the gleaming bookshelves lined with photographs of the Richardson and Chessman families on holiday in Spain, at two different World Cup finals, opening presents at Christmas. “Caroline let go of Maisie’s hand for just a moment. She wasn’t supposed to let go of her sister’s hand. She was supposed to help her, protect her, take care of her, and instead she let go and Maisie died. She’s carried that around for thirty years, because of your deception. You bought this with two little girls’ blood and tears.”

Color disappears from Mrs. Richardson’s face, leaving behind clownish color on lips, cheeks, and eyes, and trembling skin under her neck.

“Sherlock,” John says quietly.

_Bit not good._

He glances at John. Really? That’s it? Because he could continue in this vein for _hours_.

John shakes his head slightly.

That’s it, then. John says it’s time for this to end, so while Sherlock thinks he’s letting her off far too easily, Sherlock gets himself under control. John stands, so Sherlock does as well. Without another word Mrs. Richardson opens the door to her lovely home. Her control holds, but Sherlock suspects it will be a very long time before she surveys her little domicile with anything resembling satisfaction.   
  
  
The ride back to London takes longer than the conversation. They sit in silence, staring out the windscreen. Sherlock watches John absently rub his leg, the bad one.

“Text Lestrade,” Sherlock says. “See if he’s still at work.”

“You know he’s still at work,” John says as he gets out his mobile.

Indeed, when they arrive at the Yard over an hour later, Lestrade is in his office, filling out paperwork. They walk through the nearly empty squad room, Sherlock hands him the Maisie Parks cold case file. “Walter Chessman,” he says simply.

“And you know this how?”

“A witness came forward.”

“Intimidated into silence?”

“Traded her silence for a grand house in Sussex and a Land Rover.”

Lestrade’s eyebrows lift. “Right. Does Chessman know? Because if there’s a flight risk I’ll roust out — “

“He’s dead.”

Lestrade’s shoulders slump. “Right then.”

He looks at John, standing quietly beside Sherlock. “You going to write this up for the blog?”

“I’m not giving this particular witness the satisfaction,” John says.

“Too bad,” Lestrade says. “I miss your posts. He’s smart, but he doesn’t have your way with words.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. Tellingly, John doesn’t say anything one way or the other.

They turn to leave when Lestrade adds, “Sherlock, it’s a good thing you did here.” He taps the file with his forefinger. “Nothing flashy. Just good work. Thanks.”

“Using Facebook was John’s idea,” Sherlock says.

John holds his hands up. “I wrote a post. He did the deducing.”

“I hardly think suggesting the strategy that broke the case open — ”

“Go bicker at home,” Lestrade cuts in. “So I can go home. Eventually. Sometime this week.”   
  


It’s well after midnight by the time they return the car and get a taxi to Baker Street.

“Thank you for coming,” Sherlock says as they climb the stairs to the flat.

“That was a tough one. Little girl, two little girls, really. One died, and one had to go on living.”

“Her sister never got over it. She’s moved on, but she still carries that memory with her. At least now I can tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that a drunk driver is responsible for her sister’s death.”

“She’ll be grateful for that,” John says.

“But she’ll never get past it.”

He looks down into John’s eyes, sees the awareness that tells him they’re both aware of what they’re really talking about. Two steps forward, one step back, and some days he’s not sure it’s a dozen steps back. How can John ever trust him again? _How?_ Sherlock let go and John died. Or his love did. All the bricks in the world won’t bring it back, won’t make John trust him again.

“She might,” John says. His voice is quiet, but sure. “Now she knows. Don’t underestimate her. Good night.”

  
Hands tucked under his head, John lies in the second bedroom upstairs, listening to the sounds of a gorgeous, heartbreaking piece of music he can’t identify.

Fear and hope. It’s a crushing combination when he feels it himself. When he sees it in Sherlock’s eyes, it’s devastating, and it’s taking on a new edge. Pain.

He has to know. He must know. But he’s not sure exactly what it is he’s missing, what piece of information would give him what he lacks. Trust issues are tricky. He clings to what he believes to be certain, avoids everything else. The problem is…the number of things he’s certain about is shrinking, and _everything else_ includes a Sherlock he can break, and who now holds ten times the power to break John.

Letting go can be problematic.

He has to know.   
  
+  
  
John is sound asleep in Dagenham when his mobile rings in the middle of the night. He fumbles for it, fully prepared to tell Sherlock he’s in bed, asleep, and not available. But training kicks in as soon as he sees the number belongs to the psychiatrist assigned to Ernie Garrett. He’s on his feet, shoving his legs into his trousers, scuffing his bare feet into shoes as he answers the phone. “Watson.”

Doctors are trained to sound calm and collected under the worst circumstances. The worse it is, the calmer they sound.

Dr. Mendes sounds millpond calm.  

Oh God. Oh no.

John yanks on a pullover and sprints down the hall. His door slams with a hollow boom that echoes inside him as he runs toward the main road in search of a taxi.  
  


Possible break in human trafficking case. Will you come? SH

Needed at work.

That does not sound good. John hasn’t been terse with Sherlock in weeks and weeks. He goes alone, lasts a couple of hours before he’s shouting at Anderson over his evidence collection methods (still execrable), which is an improvement. He needs John more now that he can feel the tragedy of this scene, but John cannot come, and Sherlock has no right to demand his presence. So the incoming text feels like a gift.

Off work. Still need me?

On way home. Meet me there? SH

John arrives an hour later. “Sorry I couldn’t get away,” he says briskly. “What did I miss?”

“Two girls, discovered at Battersea. Both brutalized, one worse than the other. I’ve seen this before. It’s a highly effective technique to terrorise the other girls into submission. They won’t ask for help, risk escape, or befriend each other. Their killers cut their tattoos from their skin but we’ve got the locations, and that will help us narrow down missing persons. Interpol might be able to help. I may need to go to Budapest Tuesday next, assuming the corruption inquiry in Latvia proceeds — ”

He’s pacing as he talks, but when he looks at John, who’s standing at parade rest in the middle of the flat, he stops dead in his tracks. On the surface everything looks fine, just fine, just another day at the office for John Watson, but his face, his harrowed, beautiful face can’t quite hold onto the fine. Sherlock straightens. A jolt shoots up his spine and lifts the hair at his nape.

“I won’t be gone long.”

“I know.”

So Sherlock’s trip isn’t the cause.

“I will come back.”

“If I believe anything after the last year, it’s that you’ll always turn up again.”

Silence. He believes John meant those words to be humorous. They weren’t.

“John,” he says quietly. “What happened?”

John’s face wars with itself, as if the muscles and ligaments want to do one thing and the skin insists on doing something else. “Ernie Garrett tried to kill himself.”

A flat, even recitation of facts. “God. I’m sorry. How? Where?”

“His flat. Pills. We got him to hospital, pumped his stomach. He’ll be all right. Or he won’t. It’s impossible to tell right now.”

Sherlock prepares to state the blindingly obvious as gently as he can. “John. If I text you asking you to come to the scene of a brutal double murder and you’re dealing with a patient’s suicide attempt, you needn’t come.”

“You said you needed me,” John says, but there’s a tremor under the words. He flushes, looks away, rubs his hands through his hair. His next words hold a pain Sherlock can only begin to comprehend. “I’ve been no goddamn use to anyone today.”

Only John would see consulting at a double murder as being useful. Only John would take on more pain, more senseless brutality, as a way to help. But this…this will break him. It’s not humanly possible for John Watson to not care for the people in his charge. But he can’t keep going like this. If something doesn’t change, this will end John, and them.

_You wanted to stand beside him. This is what it means to stand beside John Watson._

“Dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not asking. You need to eat. And sleep.” He turns for the kitchen, confident Mrs. Hudson left curried something earlier in the week.

He has food, and he has a bedroom John can sleep in. He knows how to do this. After all, John taught him.

“I can’t. I need to talk to David about his medication and therapy plan. God. They don’t understand him like I do. There has to be something I can do.”

Sherlock turns back to the doorway between kitchen and sitting room, a container of curry in one hand and a bowl of rice in the other, because he knows that tone of voice, that frantic mental hamster wheel. “All of those things will be done in the morning. What you can do, right now, is let it go.”

John wheels on him. “Let it go? _Let it go?_ This isn’t the same as _Jim fucking Moriarty_ , Sherlock. This isn’t fake. Ernie Garrett knows he’s not clever, and he knows he’s never going to be well again. _A life is at stake!_ ”

Sherlock recoils from the venom in John’s voice. At one level he knows it’s not directed at him, but…it is. “That is not what I meant,” he says carefully.

“His life is worth something. Why doesn’t he see that? Why? Why?” John’s voice trails off. Sherlock can see the moment John realises what he’s said, and to whom. His face fractures once again. “I should be with him. I couldn’t — . I left before — . I have to go sit with him.”

The words shatter the charged air in the flat. Sherlock sees John remember the last time he sat with the aftermath of a suicide. Sherlock remembers watching him, observing without seeing what he’d done to John Watson.

He sees it now. Sherlock’s frozen in place as John bolts for the stairs, then slams out the front door.

That did not go well.

He looks at the curry, then at the rice, held in his too-large hands, and wonders why he thought he could be John for John. He’s a flapping, awkward crow of a man. He is the last person capable of offering comfort to another human being.

_Stick to not hurting. You’re almost good at it. Helping, however, is beyond you._

He puts the food back in the fridge. Is this what people do? Fail each other, then put food away? It’s…incomprehensible.

John is in pain. John is wrestling with something he cannot overcome. John should not be alone.

John left, a clear request for space.

For a long moment Sherlock considers his options. Respect boundaries or engage in creepy stalkerish behaviour and follow him? Text him? Call him? Follow him via CCTV cameras, which is also stalkerish and a boundary violation, but an invisible one, although John will know he’d do that.

John did not say _piss off_. If they have established anything at all in the complicated, insane relationship of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, it’s that the only phrase that ends them is _piss off_.

Sherlock whirls into his coat and sets off after John.   
  
  
He can’t do it.

He has to do this. Ernie Garrett is depending on him. At Barts.

It’s just Barts. It’s just hospital. They’re all alike. Floors of rooms, equipment, labs, waiting rooms, storage closets, elevators and stairways and morgues with bodies under sheets in cold trays…

He can’t do it, set foot in Barts, not even to help a wounded soldier. So he left, moving automatically through the streets to 221B Baker Street. He’s seen this before, soldiers in a trance seeking the comfort of places where they used to feel safe, as if returning to the past will heal something in their wretched present. He’s done this before. After all, he spent many an afternoon sitting in Speedy’s Cafe. Waiting.

John stops. Drives his fist into his leg. Turns in search of retreat, somewhere to hide, somewhere to pull himself together. He can’t fail, but the blackness circles overhead, spiraling down for him, talons extended and razor sharp, and he’s going to fail.

He can’t bear it. He can’t bear Barts, and he can’t bear this.

He turns again, and Sherlock’s there, off in the distance.

John finds, deep down, he knew Sherlock would be there.  

Sherlock stays put. His coat sways in the breeze. He has his hands in his pockets, and even from thirty yards away, John can see the curls dance across his forehead.

Without knowing why, or what will happen, John pulls out his mobile.

Come here.  
  
   
John moves with such distinctive purpose and intention a five-year-old could track him. Sherlock easily closes the distance between himself and a silver-gold head bobbing in the distance. When he clears the main gate to Regent’s Park, he sees John stop, then drive his fist into his leg. After a moment, he turns in Sherlock’s direction.

Sherlock just stands where he is. John sees him, and stops where he is.

Is this how John felt all the time, this never being enough, yet wanting so badly to be enough? It’s unbearable, and yet John bore it, so Sherlock will learn to.

John’s got his mobile in his hand. A second later Sherlock’s phone buzzes.

Come here.

Sherlock walks toward him. John watches him, and Sherlock has no trouble reading his mind. John’s gaze lingers on his throat, exposed by the open collar of his shirt, and then on his hips as he walks, until he stops right in front of John. “You ought to be illegal,” he says.  

_Classic avoidance technique._

This again? A mild joke intended as a diversionary tactic glossed over with a hint of sexual innuendo? For a genius he’s really quite stupid. That’s what John does. When it comes to others, John shoulders burdens, soldiers on, squares up, holds strong. When it comes to himself, he deflects, dodges, ducks, demurs, beguiles.

No.

No more.

This stops here.

He draws himself up to his full height. “John,” he begins.

John huffs out something too edgy to be a laugh. “You’re right. I won’t last a year in this job if I don’t learn to let it go. I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you meant. You meant I need to pace myself.”

He meant _I love you_. He meant _I want to take care of you_. He meant _You are not alone_. He can't blurt those things into the shimmering fall air of Regent's Park. It will give John every excuse to cut and run. “Yes.”

John’s staring off into the distance as he speaks. “It’s circling back for me,” he says, and it’s a confession, one Sherlock doesn’t understand. “I’m afraid I can’t do this job. That I’ll fail the patients.”

“It’s perfect for you, and you are perfect for it,” Sherlock says quietly. John shouldered the pain and trauma and anguish and suffering of others because he’s a good man and that’s what good men do. Who did that for John? Who stood beside him and held him up and supported him? Who made it possible for him to do what he so clearly felt called to do?

Sherlock would do that. He’s in. All in. In John’s power to forgive lies a healing they both need, but in Sherlock’s ability to be a quiet presence at John’s side lies a healing John needs, has needed since he was invalided home years ago, one exacerbated by Sherlock’s fall.

There are so many layers to friendship, so many unexplored depths. It might be enough.

“It’s better you’re not…that is…you don’t have to be alone. If you don’t want to be. Let someone else hold part of the burden for you. Let me do that. Please.”

The word seems to crack the ice-thin layer of _fine fine it’s all fine_ on John’s face. He looks at Sherlock, the webbing of lines around his eyes and mouth contorting as he struggles to keep it together. John is on the edge, as much on the edge of a ledge as Sherlock was on the roof of Barts. Anguish slices across his face, then disappears. His throat works. People stare surreptitiously as they walk past. John coughs, ducks his head.

_Not here, you idiot, in the middle of a public park._

Sherlock tilts his head back towards Baker Street. It’s a silent invitation, one John responds to by falling in beside Sherlock. They walk back to Baker Street in silence, which seems like a pathetic and inadequate response to the enormity of the situation looming on the horizon. Inside the flat Sherlock sets about making tea. He’s English. The solution to everything is to keep calm and make tea. John will talk. Sherlock will listen, and watch. For as long as it takes, he will be there for John.

When he emerges from the kitchen, he finds John hunkered down on his heels, his back to the wall, his arms covering his head. Tears plunk to the wood floor inside the door.

Weeping.

John is weeping.

Sherlock’s so astonished he stands there, tea pot in one hand and two cups in the other. Sherlock’s seen him fight through PTSD, but he’s never seen John Watson surrender. What he’s witnessing is weeping likely similar to the way he wept after Sherlock tipped off Barts and out of his life for two years.

Sherlock sets the tea pot and cups on the floor, then crawls to John’s side. He’s wracked by terrible, body length tremors, and the sobs come from somewhere deep inside him, a place Sherlock can’t even imagine. Tentatively he places his arm across John’s shoulders. John shudders, as if he’s throwing off Sherlock’s arm, but the next time Sherlock reaches for him, he collapses into Sherlock as if Sherlock is the only thing between John and utter destruction.

John Watson is a small man to carry the burdens of others, and yet he willingly carries them. The weight has nearly broken him. It takes a very long time for John to cry himself out. When Sherlock thinks about it, John’s letting out Afghanistan, his lover’s faked suicide and very real resurrection, and, most recently, Ernie Garrett, who is the visible tip of an iceberg of trauma and also the straw that broke John Watson’s back, if Sherlock wants to mix his metaphors unconscionably. It doesn’t matter now. He sits beside John until his legs fall asleep, until John’s weeping turns to tears, the subsides into shaky breathing.

“Sherlock,” he says.

Sherlock expects thank you or an apology. Given the circumstances, John’s character, Sherlock’s newly amassed database of human interaction in which people seem to apologize at the drop of a hat, he’s confident that’s what he’s going to hear in John’s trembling voice, gratitude or an unnecessary apology for being human, for needing Sherlock. "I forgive you.”

Air evaporates from Sherlock’s lungs. A powerful surge of emotion curls his fingers through John’s jumper, shirt, into the flesh and muscle and bone of his shoulder. “Shhhh. I know. I know. Go on upstairs and get some sleep,” he says quietly.

John nuzzles into his hand for a split second, soft, thin lips and a day’s worth of stubble, the skin of his cheekbone damp with tears. Then he goes upstairs without another word.   
  
  
Well, that was embarrassing.

In the loo John splashes cold water on his face until his face feels cool, then braces his hands on the porcelain sink. Head bent, he refuses to look in the mirror. He’d intended to bestow his forgiveness on Sherlock like a gift — the only gift he has to offer the well-dressed consulting detective who has everything — and instead he fumbled it into the air in a voice ravaged by a snotty crying jag.

_Lovely. Nice. Well done, Watson._

In his room John lies down on top of the covers, fully dressed. He intends to get himself together, then go back downstairs, but sleep hooks him like the cartoon character snagged from a spotlight. One minute he’s aware of the light coming through the bedroom window, the next he’s aware that the light has shifted up the wall, and Sherlock’s playing the violin.

Violin. 221B. He knows.

What he knows is that he’s never going to know.

Sherlock’s right, as he so often is. John has to let go. The only way he’s ever going to know he trusts Sherlock again is to let go of the fear and let Sherlock walk beside him and shoulder his burden. He’s the one holding them back this time, trying to know, grasping after a security that will never come.

He doesn’t have to _know_. Knowing is as much of an illusion as safety.

John has to let go, before it’s too late.   
  


A hint of autumn sharpens the air as Sherlock stands in front of the window nearest the fireplace. He’s serenading young lovers across the street when John comes down the stairs. He finishes the movement, then lets the violin droop from his shoulder.

“I woke you,” Sherlock says into the quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“I…yes, but it’s fine. I kind of missed it. I still wake up in the middle of the night and think I heard the violin.” He looks at Sherlock. “You need to sleep, too. That crime scene today sounded brutal, and they’re not going to get easier.”

Was it always going to be like this, moments of opportunity arriving at the worst possible time for Sherlock to act on them? Because it’s too late in the evening, after too difficult a day for John. “I know,” Sherlock says quietly. “I’m going to bed now.”

He reaches into the violin case for the soft cloth he uses to wipe the instrument. John watches him, and Sherlock experiences a moment of rightness _violin 221B night John watching_ so profound he wants to weep when it dissipates.

“That’s not what you’d normally play when you’re working on a case. What’s the occasion?”

Sherlock gestures out the window. John crosses the sitting room _passing in front of a perfectly good window_ to stand very, very close to Sherlock. He takes in the couple, leaning against a car and snogging.

“Oh.”

John ducks his head and puts his hands on his hips, as if the sight is too much for him. Sherlock watches a moment longer, soaking up the sensation of John’s body heat seeping through his clothes. Anyway, the incoming data stream is quite good, a chance to test his improving sentiment skills.

Yes. He will focus on the lovers. Not John.

It’s a thorough, slow snog, one that’s been going on for quite some time. They’re kissing as if they have all the time in the world _John’s not moving_ nothing to rush, nothing to dread, no awareness that life will bring pain beyond measure, and that what they feel may not be enough but it’s all they have _John’s not moving_. They kiss as if they’ll never have to begin again, and again, and again…

John’s not moving.

When he turns away from the window, John is still right there, his body sharing heat with Sherlock’s, his face tipped up. His hair and face are rumpled with sleep, his eyes dark with pain and purpose and an intent that stops cellular vibrations in Sherlock. John tilts his head a little, then nudges up into Sherlock’s mouth. John’s mouth slides across his, his lips soft and warm from sleep, with a sharp edge from the gold-and-silver scruff around John’s mouth. The pain in Sherlock’s chest is so staggeringly sharp he freezes.

John pulls back. “Do you…not want this?”

Sherlock presses one hand to his breastbone. The ominous thuds come with the spacing and impact of an anvil tumbling down a rocky hillside. They didn’t lessen when John broke off the kiss. “I think I’m having a heart attack,” he says.

Which, all things considered, would be a cruel twist of fate indeed.

John slides a chair into the backs of his knees and Sherlock folds into it. He braces his elbows on his thighs, laces his fingers together behind his head, and hunches over while John presses his strong fingers into Sherlock’s wrist. “Please John, please, I didn’t know, you were _so vulnerable_ and I didn’t know, I can’t, please, please don’t kiss me if you don’t mean it — .”   
  
_Did you mean it?_   
  
“Shhhh,” John says, as if he can hear Sherlock thinking. “Shhh. Shhh.” He rubs Sherlock’s back between his shoulder blades. It’s soothing, the noise and the touch. Slowly Sherlock lets his guard down, lets his hands relax until they dangle from his knees. But he still can’t look at John.

Then John comes to him.

“I meant it,” John says, low and even and sure. He sets his mouth to the spot where Sherlock’s jaw meets his ear.

Sherlock jolts.

“I mean this, too,” John says, and kisses the tender skin under Sherlock’s ear.

“And this,” he repeats, and mouths his way along the line of Sherlock’s jaw, to the corner of his mouth.

“I mean this,” he whispers again. His lips move against Sherlock’s, who is unable to keep himself from turning his face to John’s. The brush of lip against lip, the shocking hot slide of John’s tongue into his mouth, the taste of him nearly does Sherlock in.

John flattens his hand against Sherlock’s chest _an unscientific way of taking his pulse_ then fists his hand in his shirt _wrong possessive oh God want need desire I am yours_. Sherlock drags John across his lap, and he thought this would be slow and sweet, a careful exploration of bodies years older than before, a cataloging of changes and similarities, pleasure layered on pleasure until they were boneless, mindless. But the flames roar up, an affirmation of life and love and hope. His tongue is in John’s mouth and his hands slide under John’s jumper and shirt. John’s hands are opening his shirt, then his trousers, and God, he’s going to die after this, but he must have it, have John, now, forever, but _nownownow_.

The grip of John’s fist on his cock forces a low, rough groan from his throat.

He gets John’s jeans open and shoved, together with his pants, lower on his hips. It’s sheer animal rutting, John’s hand squeezing their cocks together, working the pre-come around their glans to slick things up. Sherlock wraps his hand around their cocks from the other side, and the circuit’s complete. They thrust and grind and stroke. John’s gripping the back of the chair with one hand. His ankles are tucked into the chair legs, tilting him forward. Sherlock’s feet are braced against the floor, giving him the leverage he needs to thrust up.

John licks his hand, then locks eyes with Sherlock, lifts his palm and licks it, too. Sherlock cries out at the slick glide of tongue against his palm. The little bit of extra lubricant is all they need. He reaches up with his free hand and grips John’s nape, drawing John’s forehead down to meet his. I _meant it_ get strangled in his throat as pleasure tightens every muscle in his body.

“Oh, fuck,” John gasps. His mouth is millimeters from Sherlock’s, so his breath gusts over Sherlock’s open lips. “Oh fuck Sherlock oh _fuckohfuck_.”

“John — .” Sherlock’s voice is nearly soundless. His cock jerks and pulses semen onto his chest, then his abdomen.

John’s release follows almost immediately. Chest heaving, he slumps forward and rests his forehead on Sherlock’s. “That was…fuck, now _I’m_ having a heart attack…Christ, that was…exactly like it used to be.”

“It used to last much longer,” Sherlock says. It wasn’t enough. His fingers relax and lift to hover over the nape of John’s neck, but he’s not sure he can touch John there now that the passion’s gone.  His hand ghosts over the equally intimate patch of skin on John’s hip, and finally falls to his own thigh.

“It’s been a while,” John admits, seemingly unaware of the little drama of Where to Place One’s Hands After Frottage With One’s Former Lover playing out along his back. “There’s been no one since you came back from the dead.”

Sherlock is quiet. “There’s been no one since you,” he says finally.

John sits back and stares at him. Their semen slides down Sherlock’s ribs, into his shirt, but all he cares about is the sheen on John’s eyes. Sherlock has an odd impulse to touch the tips of his fingers to John’s eyelid so the liquid seeps out, then set his mouth to the crease and taste it. He doesn’t. He stares into John’s ocean-dark, ocean-deep eyes while John processes this last piece of information.

“I’ll get you a towel,” John replies hoarsely.

That is not what Sherlock hoped John would say. Did they just become friends with benefits? Because that is _not fine_.

He closes his legs so John can ease off him and retrieve a towel from the kitchen. He cleans himself up, then tosses it to Sherlock, who wipes off his stomach and cock. John buttons up, then moves away from Sherlock into the light falling through the opposite window.   
The couple outside has replaced Sherlock’s violin with the car radio. A woman’s voice, clear and strong, drifts up, raspy, powerful, aching with a depth of feeling that acknowledges so much, longing despite the pain, love in the face of betrayal:  
  
 _Round and around and around and around we go_  
 _Ohhh now tell me now tell me now tell me now you know_  
  
Darkness lies between them as John stands, hands on hips, and looks anywhere but at Sherlock. This is where he leaves. In the past, when they’ve crossed a difficult emotional threshold, John leaves.

“You’re leaving now,” Sherlock says across the void.

“Is that a question or a statement?” John says to the window.

Sherlock finishes fastening his trousers, then looks up at him. “A question,” he revises.

“I don’t want to leave,” John says.  

_Don’t theorize ahead of data. Don’t deduce. Ask._

“What do you want?”

John’s eyes are so familiar Sherlock’s heart stops. He knows that emotion, knows it well, from John’s birthday. It’s fear and hope.

“Get some sleep. Wake up to you sprawled over two thirds of the bed. Eat something. Do that — “ John nods at the chair where Sherlock sits, “ — again. Properly.”

John’s learnt to mistrust his desires. But Sherlock hopes. He aches and hopes. Still sitting in the rectangle of streetlight coming through his window, Sherlock braces his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands to hide the tremors as he tips into emptiness. “John,” he says quietly. “I…want everything you want…I want more. I want you to stay but you are under considerable emotional distress…I want you to stay, I want to _ask_ you to stay _forever_ , but I will not take advantage of you again…”

His voice trails off.

_Stay._ The singer’s voice cries out from the car radio below, challenge, plea, dare, demand, a call, all in one powerful female voice.

They both stand on the front lines of the war against evil and despair, because that’s who they are, where they live, in a London alternately vibrantly alive and eerily silent, in the in between. It was wrong to bring it up, but the time will never be right, he thinks with despair. It will never be right.

Hand still on his hips, John looks at him. “If you want me to stay, ask me to stay.”

Panic closes Sherlock’s throat. _Not yet, not yet, let me continue to woo you until there’s no doubt, no hesitation. I was just getting good at it._

But John kissed him. John said _I meant it_. Is John waiting for him on the other side of this final barrier?

“Stay,” he says, his voice nearly soundless.  

“I’m an invalided soldier with PTSD and trust issues,” John says bluntly. “I’ll never be right.”

Sherlock shakes his head in disbelief. As if John could ever be _wrong_. Sherlock looks at John’s steady hands, at the unselfconscious set of his shoulders, the deep peace in his dark blue eyes. He’s the hero. He’s the one who throws himself into every incarnation of hell for Sherlock, for strangers. Sherlock wants, more than any drug or sex or victory, the privilege of standing beside him while he does.   

“Stay. Please,” Sherlock adds, stronger, because that’s what people do, and because he means it.

John cocks his head and considers Sherlock as if to say _Your turn_.

“I,” Sherlock says precisely as he gets to his feet, “am a terrible risk. As you have proof.”

“And yet here I am,” John says, dead serious. “Here I am. Again. Do you risk your life to prove you’re clever?”

“I have done, yes. Not of late. Tonight I’m going to risk my heart to prove I love.”

John goes still.

Sherlock stands in the light cast through the farthest sitting room window. “I love you.”

John Watson is a frozen sculpture of crow’s feet, sex flush, mussed silver-blond hair, and courage, of slept-in clothes over muscle and bone and scar tissue. Right now he stands in front of Sherlock with Sherlock’s heart, mind, soul tucked away in his breast pocket of his button down shirt, between his warm, soft jumper and his beating heart. He is the only thing that is good and right in Sherlock’s world. He is John, his John.

Sherlock continues. “I’ll never be right either, but nonetheless, I love you. It’s not enough, and it’s all I have. All I am. I love you, John. Stay forever. Please.”  
  


_I love you, John._  
 _Stay forever._  
 _Please._  
  
It’s the ultimate in vulnerability. I love you. No pressure to say it back. But he will. Because he does. Has since the day Sherlock admitted he wanted to kiss John, and yet didn’t want to want to kiss John. Never stopped. He loves this man, the most human of humans. That’s what stepping off the roof of Bart’s did for Sherlock. It took him on a journey into the darkest, strangest of places, the human soul. His own, incontrovertibly human soul.   
  
Letting go can do the same for John.  
  
A crevasse gapes at his feet, not all that dissimilar from the black canyons that stretch between London rooftops, the one where he left his cane behind. If Sherlock can learn to love, then John can learn to fly. He takes a deep breath, as if gearing up for a running leap, as if sprinting as hard as he can at the edge to fling himself into the void.  
“I love you, too.”  
  
  
Sherlock’s closes his eyes briefly. Best to blink now, in case this disappears whilst he does.  
  
  
When he opens his eyes again, John is still there, his hand extended into the darkness between them. Sherlock takes it, and they yank each other into the void of shadowy space. The impact forces a raw sound from Sherlock’s throat. He wraps his arms around John’s shoulders, buries his face in John’s hair. John’s on his toes, and the grip of his arms around Sherlock’s shoulder blades is tight enough to bruise. They are crushed together along the length of their bodies. John makes a sound somewhere between a sob, a gulp, and a hitching breath.

“God, I missed you.”

Sherlock tightens his grip, then strokes the back of John’s nape with his hand. He nuzzles into his hair, his ear, breathing in John, absorbing John through his skin. John sighs, then tucks his head under Sherlock’s chin. His lips press against his pulse. Sherlock feels _Loveyouloveyouloveyou_ resonate against his throat as much as hears the words. He tilts his head so his mouth is above John’s ear and gives the words back to him in a murmur. _I love you, too, John. John. I love you._

John.

A tremor undulates slowly through John. Sherlock tightens his arms, pulling John closer, and when the tremor ends, they’re curved into and around each other, so there is no space between.

Silence falls, or perhaps they fall into silence. Either way, they’re together, and together they’re falling. Flying. The slow, deeply percussive beats of Sherlock’s heart are wings, lifting them up, defying gravity, holding them aloft in the currents.

Flying is controlled falling.

Soaring is love.   
  
+  
  
Before he can sleep, however, there is something John must do. He goes to Barts to sit with unconscious Ernie Garrett. He shakes the whole time he’s there, his voice trembling as he talks to the fallen soldier, the tremor in his hands resolving only when he reaches for Ernie Garrett’s limp fingers. _You are not alone. I will not leave you. I will not fail you. You do not walk alone, and you never will._   
  
He stays as long as he can. Ten minutes. Not long. He’ll do better the next time, and the time after that. When he leaves, Sherlock is waiting for him at the end of the corridor. John walks right up to him and buries his face in his chest. Sherlock wraps one arm around him, holding him close in the silent ward. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known, or will ever know,” he says.

“I don’t feel very brave,” John says to the Belstaff.

“That’s why I’m here. I see you, John Watson. I see you.”

John looks up into those wise gray eyes. “I know.”

One corner of Sherlock’s mouth lifts. “Home. Bed.”

He’ll get no argument from John.  
  
+  
  
“Wake up, John.”

He’s dreaming. Has to be dreaming the erotic contrast of a soft mouth and rough stubble against the sensitive inside of John’s wrist. A tongue lingers over the tendons under his skin, then the mouth moves to the inside of his elbow, then the hollow of his shoulder, then the juncture of neck and collarbone. A soft, sleepy noise somewhere between a moan and a plea drifts into the bedroom’s still air. It’s him, and it’s been an eternity since he made that sound.

There is no moment of uncertainty. John knows exactly where he is. In shrinking concentric circles: England, London, Westminster, 221 Baker Street, flat B, in Sherlock’s bedroom, in Sherlock’s bed. Sherlock’s sprawled half on top of him, his leg between John’s, his calf tucked under John’s, and _yesGodyes_ that’s Sherlock’s mouth exploring the transition from skin to beard on his throat.  
He knows exactly where he is, who he’s with, and what’s going to happen. The certainty of it all grips his throat, and he makes that sleep-rough sound again.  

“John. Wake up.”

“Don’t want to,” he murmurs even as his arm wraps around Sherlock’s shoulders. “Dreaming.”

“About what?”

“Kissing.”  
A low, furry chuckle he feels against his throat. “You’re not dreaming,” Sherlock says, and presses his hard cock against John’s thigh for emphasis.

“God,” John growls. His hands grip Sherlock’s shoulder and hip, holding him still while John attempts to writhe against him. Sherlock’s positioned himself so there’s no pressure on John’s cock, and he finds he wants that quite badly right now. “It’s a good dream.”  
Sherlock makes another one of those velvety noises and proceeds to kiss his way up John’s throat to the soft skin under his jaw, then his ear, then work his way to the corner of John’s mouth. He pauses there, using teeth and tongue on the hyper-sensitive skin until John’s lips part. When Sherlock continues to tease him, John uses surprise and control of Sherlock’s hips to roll him onto his back.

“My turn,” he says.

Sherlock lies beneath him, his face beautifully stunned, full of awe, all barriers down. John returns the tease, kissing around Sherlock’s mouth with flickering licks and worrying nips until Sherlock’s mouth opens. Even then John restrains himself, tongue caressing the soft skin of his inner lip, teeth, retreating to mouth at his jaw, then back, slightly harder. He pauses to tug Sherlock’s t-shirt over his head, then lift his arms while Sherlock does the same to him. His hips match the rhythm of his mouth, pressing against Sherlock’s thigh as he licks deeper, easing away when he kisses along his eyelids. John’s familiar with invading in all its forms and guises; he’s quite good at this part, so Sherlock’s mouth is wide open and thoroughly conquered by the time John draws back to look at him.

The ground still vibrates when Sherlock moans.

“I want to be inside you, but if I do this will be over in seconds.”

Sherlock stops pretending John can pin him to the bed and rolls them into their original positions. “Next time,” he says.

John’s pants join Sherlock’s pajama bottoms on the floor. Kneeling between his spread thighs, Sherlock reaches into the bedside table to withdraw lubricant and condoms. John nods at the condoms. “I had my physical a couple of months ago,” John says. “All tests were negative, I was always, always careful, but I’ll get tested again if you want.”

“No, it’s fine…I’m not sure how long I’ll last without one,” Sherlock admits.

“Just go slow,” John whispers. He wants this more than anything, Sherlock bare inside him, the electrifying connection of skin to skin. “Sherlock. Please.”

Sherlock tosses the condoms back in the drawer, then settles between John’s legs to open him. Taking his time, he lifts John’s thigh onto his shoulder. When the first finger breaches him, John winds his fingers in Sherlock’s hair. “Jesus. Yes,” he growls.   
He gets exactly what he asked for, a slow, steady rhythm, carefully avoiding his prostate, just opening him for the second finger, not intending to arouse him and all the more arousing for it. In very due (overdue) time Sherlock adds a third. It’s all John can do to keep his hands off his cock. His arse pulses around Sherlock’s fingers until his arms and legs are trembling.

“Now,” he whispers. “Now, now, please, now.”

And then and then _oh Jesus God_ Sherlock kisses his way up John’s body to loom over him. His mouth hot and soft against John’s, he presses his glans against John’s slippery hole and begins a long, steady push inside. When his hips are flush with John’s arse, John closes his eyes and pulls his legs a little farther back, lets his knees drop open. Sherlock slips even deeper. Pleasure thuds through him. When it subsides, John takes a deep, shaky breath.

“God. Just…fuck.”

“Open your eyes, John.”

John shakes his head. “Too much. You can talk or I can open my eyes. Not both.”

He somehow senses the smile. “We’ll see. We’ve got all the time in the world,” Sherlock murmurs. He’s on his elbows above John now, nuzzling into John’s hair, his ear, dropping kisses on his mouth, holding his flat stomach away from John’s aching, dripping cock. He doesn’t move. He just stays inside John, kissing him, until John feels his orgasm ebb down his shaft to pool in his balls.

“Okay. I’m good,” he says, and opens his eyes.

Sherlock’s still there, thumb idling at John’s temple. His eyes are a fathomless gray as he peers deep into John’s soul.

“I love you,” John says. He can’t help himself. He’s on the edge of everything, and he can no sooner stop the words than he can stop his heart from beating.

“And I love you,” Sherlock replies.

His voice is a baritone rasp, and for a moment John’s throat closes. He could die now, and everything would be fine, just fine. All that came before and all that will come after turns on this fulcrum, this fixed point in time and space and history. Sherlock is inside him and he loves John.

It’s too much.

John thinks hard about the McBurney incision, the way it parallels the external oblique two to five centimeters from the right ilium's anterior superior spine then travels through the external oblique to the internal oblique and transversalis muscles.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Appendicectomy. You?”

“How you smell.”

“Morning breath?”

Sherlock bends his head to John’s cheekbone, where he inhales. “Sex. Tears. Sleep. Skin. Your skin has the most distinct scent, like chai tea and curry and the clinic’s hand soap, but right now you smell like salt and sex. It’s very arousing.”

Fuck it all. John reaches down and grips the base of his cock, trapping his orgasm in his balls. He shifts under Sherlock, opening himself wider, squirming closer. Sherlock gasps rather gratifyingly. “Keep talking.”

“I’m also thinking about how you taste. I love the taste of sweat on your skin, and I love the taste of tears, too.”

One seeps from the corner of John’s eye. He’s so emotionally exposed like this, and he just doesn’t care. Sherlock’s here, with him. “It’s how life tastes,” John manages. “Sex and sadness. Like the sea.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees. “I’m also thinking about how I want to shove your knees to your chin and fuck you through the wall.”

John’s cock throbs, hard. He’s going to be talked right into an orgasm. “Jesus. Stop talking.”

Another velvety questioning noise. Not talking, but… _What? Why?_

“I don’t want this to end, and if you say another word, I’m going to embarrass myself.”

Sherlock chuckles.

“Stop laughing, too.”

He presses his lips together, but John sees amusement in the lines beside his mouth and eyes. It gleams in his gray eyes. He’s seen the full range of humanity in Sherlock now. Grief and anger and desolation, laughing and loving. God. Loving.

Ankles to his ears for a good hard fuck can be very loving. “Next time?” he asks with a strangled gasp.

“Next time you fuck me,” Sherlock murmurs. “Time after that?”

“It’s a date.”

Sherlock goes silent, braced on his elbows, kissing John until his nerves seethe in his skin. “Once. Just once.” He knows it’s going to end this. He has to have it.

The stroke is slow and measured, and as brilliant and fiery and devastating as Sherlock. It doesn’t end it, but it does send a percussive beat of pleasure through John, eddying against his skin. “Christ. Oh, Christ. So…fucking…good.”

“Again?”

“God, yes.”

“Don’t come,” Sherlock says. “John, don’t come. Not yet.”

So John fights it even as he surrenders to the exquisite tension Sherlock spins as fine and strong as silk. His hands roam from Sherlock’s back to his hair to his arse. He digs his fingers into Sherlock’s bum, pulling him closer with every measured stroke. Sherlock draws it out until John’s shoulders curl up off the bed as he buries his face in Sherlock’s neck.

One hand cups the back of John’s head. “I love you.”

Lovers words in a lover’s voice, and John’s utterly undone. It’s like dying, or as he imagines dying, held in Sherlock’s arms, his vision going black as he shudders and comes and comes and comes, one last burst of pleasure as Sherlock’s release pulses inside him.

When he regains coherence, Sherlock’s cleaning him up. John musters the energy to scoot onto one half of the bed, but when Sherlock flops down beside him, he gathers John in. “That’s what’s supposed to happen after someone says I love you.”

Sherlock’s voice is drowsy, and deep enough to dowse for water. John smiles. “It’s one of many things that can happen after someone says I love you.”

“Hmmmmm,” he says. “Better than last time.”

It’s John’s turn to make a velvety humming noise. Sherlock’s eyes drift close, but he forces them open again. To John’s experienced eye it looks like he’s fighting the sleep that comes after a case; in some ways, this was the ultimate case. A Study in Sentiment. The Adventure of the Most Human of Humans. A Case of Identity.

How would he write this up? How could he _possibly_ write this up? He won’t do it, of course. _The Resurrection of John Watson_ will stay between them.

John reaches up and tucks Sherlock’s hair behind his ear, then brushes his thumb over that impossible mouth. “Your control was better than mine.”

“Wanked before I started,” Sherlock mumbles without opening his eyes.

John giggles. Sherlock’s answering smile is nothing more than a lift of his cheek and a slight wrinkling at the corner of his eye. He’s almost out, but can’t seem to stop himself from checking to make sure John’s still there. John shifts a little closer, and Sherlock tightens his grip on John’s hip. “Don’t get up,” he murmurs. “Stay here a little longer.”

John watches Sherlock drift. “I’m staying forever.”   
  
+  
  
John wakes before Sherlock does. He watches his lover breathe deeply, his long fingers twitching in his dreams, before he slides out of bed. He takes a quick shower, dresses in his spare clothes (neatly laundered, thank you Mrs. Hudson), then wanders into the sitting room and looks around. It’s the same yet not the same, like Sherlock. Like him. For starters, it’s oddly clean. No matter. A couple of boxes and suitcases in a taxi’s boot and he’ll be home.

Home.

Might as well make it official. He opens Sherlock’s laptop, finds the Fibonacci’s constant on his phone, types in the password (with proper substitutions), and opens the Science of Deduction website to the forums. His admin identity is still there. He opens a text entry box, and types two words.

I’m back.

The mouse arrow hovers over the Post button. It’s a hobby. Everyone needs a hobby, especially people in difficult, stressful jobs, and there are stranger recreational activities than solving crimes with his lover, the world’s only consulting detective, and blogging about it.

_Click._

Posted. Done.

He goes to the kitchen to make tea and scrounge up something to eat. Sherlock won’t sleep long, and John’s feeling half of his forty-plus years, so they’re going to need fuel.  
  
+  
  
Three days later John sets his crumb-strewn plate in the sink next to the dishes from last night. Today is the day the team meets with Ernie Garrett. Sherlock was up late IMing an agent with Interpol and therefore is still asleep, so John texts him. Sherlock will look at his mobile before he’ll get out of bed, much less open his laptop.

1\. Good morning.  
2\. Will bring home takeaway. Thai or Indian?  
3\. Do the dishes. I’m not kidding, Sherlock.

He swallows the last of his tea, grabs his messenger bag, and heads out the door. Half way down the steps he remembers his ID, and trots back up to grab it.

Just inside the door a hand fists in his shirtfront, and he’s dragged full length against Sherlock’s body for a thorough kiss. His lover smells like sleepy, unshaven man, his hair a wild tangle of curls, his mouth still beautifully swollen from the previous night.

“God,” John mutters against Sherlock’s mouth. “I have to go.”

The kiss stays deep and passionate for a few more seconds, then backs off into a more gentle rubbing of lips. “I know. Important day. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

With one last flick of his tongue, Sherlock releases John’s shirt, then slaps his ID into his palm. “Thai tonight, and yes, I’ll do the dishes.”

“Did my text wake you?”

Sherlock just smiles lazily, lifts one brow, and shakes his head.

Like an idiot, John grins back, then heads out again.

He’s not even to the corner when his phone buzzes.

I meant it. SH

John smiles, and texts a reply as he crosses the street.

I know.    
  


FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> For those interested in what happened after Sherlock swiped the clip from John's pocket in One Temporary Escape, there is a final installment in the series called [Certain Skills](http://archiveofourown.org/works/873961). I've not added it to the chapters version of this work because it's technically not canon, but more of a DVD extra. Trigger warning for gun kink (with an unloaded gun). John's very BAMFy, if that works for you.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for NoStraightLine's "Trying to Find The In-Between"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/982475) by [fiorinda_chancellor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorinda_chancellor/pseuds/fiorinda_chancellor)
  * [[Podfic] Trying to Find The In-Between by NoStraightLine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3730738) by [AxeMeAboutAxinomancy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy/pseuds/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy)




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